Jimmy Wales is one name that will ever remain in the history of information technology. He is an American entrepreneur, and the co-founder of Wikipedia as well as Wikia, a web hosting company.
Wikipedia, as we know, is a free content online encyclopedia that has helped people worldwide to access information on a wide range of topics.
It started off in March 2000 as Nupedia, an open-content reference site. Wales was working on his startup named Bornis, when he conceived the idea of an online encyclopedia.
Once Nupedia was set up, Wales hired academic Larry Sanger as its editor-in-chief. On January 15th, 2001 the duo launched the non-profit Wikipedia, an advanced version of Nupedia, that later came to become one of the most popular websites in the world.
Wikipedia was just one of the ventures started by Wales to democratize IT. In 2003, Wales founded the Wikimedia Foundation; a San Francisco based charitable organization, to develop wiki-based projects for the public, free of charge. The following year, he founded the company, Wikia Inc.
