
Bomis
Sign in to saveBomis, Inc. (, from Bitter Old Men in Suits; rhyming with "promise") was an American dot-com company best known for supporting the creations of free-content online-encyclopedia projects Nupedia and Wikipedia. It was co-founded in 1996 by Jimmy Wales, Tim Shell, and Michael Davis. By 2007, the company was inactive, with its Wikipedia-related resources transferred to the Wikimedia Foundation.
Key facts
- Website.name
- Bomis, Inc.
- Website.logo
- Bomis oval.svg
- Website.company_type
- Private
- Website.foundation
- 1996
- Website.CEO
- Tim Shell
- Website.location_city
- St. Petersburg, Florida
- Website.location_country
- United States
- Website.industry
- Dot-com
- Website.num_employees
- 10
- Website.url
- bomis.com, archived at the Internet Archive
- Website.language
- English
- Website.advertising
- Yes
- Website.registration
- No
- Website.launch_date
- 1996
- Website.dissolved
- 2007
via Wikipedia infobox
~20 min read
Encyclopedic overview
13 sectionsContents
- History
- Background
- Foundation
- Hosted content
- Nupedia and Wikipedia
- Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees
- Aftermath
- Description of site
- Footnotes
- References
- Bibliography
- Further reading
- External links
Bomis, Inc. (, from Bitter Old Men in Suits; rhyming with "promise") was an American dot-com company best known for supporting the creations of free-content online-encyclopedia projects Nupedia and Wikipedia. It was co-founded in 1996 by Jimmy Wales, Tim Shell, and Michael Davis. By 2007, the company was inactive, with its Wikipedia-related resources transferred to the Wikimedia Foundation.
The company initially tried a number of ideas for content, including being a directory of information about Chicago. The site subsequently focused on content geared to a male audience, including information on sporting activities, automobiles, and women. Bomis became successful after focusing on pornography. "Bomis Babes" was devoted to erotic images; the "Bomis Babe Report" featured adult pictures. Bomis Premium, available for an additional fee, provided explicit material. "The Babe Engine" helped users find erotic content through a web search engine. The advertising director for Bomis noted that 99 percent of queries on the site were for nude women.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Bomis” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.