Bomis (pronounced /bms/ to rhyme with "promise")1 was a dot-com company founded in 1996 by Jimmy Wales and Tim Shell. Its primary business was the sale of advertising on the Bomis.com search portal and to provide support for the free encyclopedia projects Nupedia and Wikipedia. As of 2006 Tim Shell was the CEO of Bomiscitation needed but it seems to have disappeared from the Internet the same year.why

Bomis created and hosted web rings around search terms popular among male users. The rings were categorized broadly as "Babe" "Entertainment" "Sports" "Adult" "Science fiction" and "Other".2 The "Adult" "Babe" and "Entertainment" categories were the most frequently updated and the most popular. In addition Bomis hosted a copy of the Open Directory Project search directory. These search-related pages generated revenue from advertising and affiliate marketing. Contents 1 Hosted content 2 Role in the creation of Nupedia and Wikipedia 3 References 4 External links and sources Hosted content

Bomis ran a website called Bomis Premium at premium.bomis.com until 2005 offering customers access to premium X-rated3 pornographic content.

Until mid-2005 Bomis also featured the Bomis Babe Report a free blog publishing news and reviews about celebrities models and the adult entertainment industry. The Babe Report prominently linked to Bomis Premium and frequently posted updates about new models joining Bomis. Bomis has also operated nekkid.info a free repository of selected erotic photographs4 and continues to host The Babe Engine "a precision babe search engine" which indexes photos ranging from glamour photography to pornography.5

In addition Bomis has provided hosting to websites supporting Objectivist and other libertarian political views including the "Freedom's Nest"6 a database of books and quotes and "We the Living" a large objectivist community website which is now defunct. Role in the creation of Nupedia and Wikipedia The Bomis staff as of the summer of 2000. Main article: History of Wikipedia

Bomis is best known for having supported the creation of the free-content online encyclopedia projects Nupedia and Wikipedia. Bomis hosted Nupedia in 2000 and Larry Sanger was hired to manage and edit that project. A year into the development of Nupedia Bomis decided the project was too expensivecitation needed and a so called "wiki" was set up as a way to solicit free new drafts for Nupedia.

Wiki as a word as a concept and as a software technology for websites that allows multiple users to edit and update a text or program quickly and easily was an invention of and created and developed by Ward Cunningham in 1994. The new online-encyclopedia on base of Ward's wiki-technology was named Wikipedia and it looked exactly the same as Cunningham's websites. While originally intended as a "feeder" project for Nupedia Wikipediawith its much lower barriers to contribution and its much lower costs for Bomisrapidly outgrew its parent in size and attention.

For a while Bomis provided web servers and bandwidth for these projects paid Sanger in his role as project editor-in-chief (until he left the projects in 2002) and owned key items such as the associated domain names. However as the costs of Wikipedia rose with its popularity Bomis' revenues declined as result of the dot-com-crash a general reluctance to display advertising on the sitetogether with a desire from the Wikipedia community to reflect the spirit of openness and neutrality central to Wikipediasuggested an alternative ownership model.

The Wikimedia Foundation was formally announced on June 20 2003. All intellectual property and domain name assets including "Wikipedia" were transferred or donated over to the foundation which was registered as a non-profit organization but the server hardware was not transferred. 7 Bomis CEO Tim Shell became the Vice Chair of the Board of Trustees of the foundation with Jimmy Wales as another board member. In December 2006 Tim Shell was replaced by Jan-Bart de Vreede. Jimmy Wales continues to retain a role on the board of the Foundation which now is entirely responsible for funding (almost entirely through donations) the operation of Wikipedia and its sister projects. References Bomis FAQ "Bomis What's New". http://www.bomis.com/bomisreport/. Retrieved July 14 2008.  Susan Kuchinskas iMedia Connection Jimmy Wales: Why the recession will not kill digital media March 26 2009. See domain name registration information and archived copies The site is advertised on Bomis.com; as of March 2006 it resolved to the same IP address as premium.bomis.com and it uses bomis.com as its nameservers. "Freedom's Nest website". http://www.freedomsnest.com. Retrieved March 16 2006.  "Wikipedia-l - Announcing Wikimedia Foundation". http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2003-June/010743.html. Retrieved 2007-04-07.  External links and sources Florida portal Companies portal Wikipedia portal Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Bomis Jimmy Wales on the Wikipedia-L mailing list about Bomis October 28 2001 Jimmy Wales and Bomis - Times Online Jimmy Wales and Bomis - wired.com Bomis at the Internet Archive v d eWikipedia Main articles History  Wikimedia Foundation  Wikimania  MediaWiki  ArbCom  Reliability  Community  Deletionism and inclusionism  Notability  Edit war  Vandalism  Sock puppetry  Academic studies about Wikipedia  In culture People Jimmy Wales  Larry Sanger  Florence Devouard  Oscar van Dillen  Angela Beesley Starling  Sue Gardner  Erik Mller  Michael Snow Events Blocking of Wikipedia by the People's Republic of China  USA Congressional staff edits to Wikipedia  Essjay controversy  Wikipedia biography controversy  Chris Benoit double murder and suicide  Henryk Batuta hoax  Internet Watch Foundation and Wikipedia  Church of Scientology editing on Wikipedia  CAMERA campaign in Wikipedia Related projects Bomis  Nupedia  Citizendium  Enciclopedia Libre Universal en Espaol  Deletionpedia  Interpedia  MyWikiBiz  Veropedia  Wikia  Wikipedia Review  WikiPilipinas  WikiScanner Media The Cult of the Amateur  How Wikipedia Works  La rvolution Wikipdia  The Truth According to Wikipedia  Truth in Numbers  The Wikipedia Revolution  Wikipedia The Missing Manual   The World and Wikipedia   Good Faith Collaboration Wiktionary  Wikibooks  Wikiquote  Wikisource  Wikimedia Commons  Wikinews  Wikiversity