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Jimmy Wales shames PR editors

By Gregory Kohs

 

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Some companies, like General Motors, Procter & Gamble, and Apple, spend many millions of dollars in promotional advertising campaigns. Other companies, like Rolls-Royce, Krispy Kreme, and the makers of Sriracha hot sauce, allocate no money toward traditional ad marketing. According to Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales, we can add his new wireless telephony firm to the list of “no advertising” operations. Ever since its principal financier Andrew Rosenfeld met an unexpected and untimely death, cellular start-up The People’s Operator has put its hopes in Wales’ hands, relying on him to enhance their “no ads” public relations campaign. While the company’s recent initial public offering on the London exchange raised about £20 million for the company’s bottom line, The People’s Operator (TPOP) share price has remained stuck below its initial 130 pence peg, with very little trading activity. Expenditures at the mobile virtual network operator are outpacing revenues by a factor of sixty percent, and its P/E ratio is negative 63. Perhaps desperate for new life, what better way to spike awareness and boost consideration than to send Wikipedia’s co-founder on a media tour to announce TPOP’s new social media platform and its pending entry into the U.S. market? If there’s anything Jimmy Wales is good at, it’s getting his mug in front of consumer eyeballs.

But then there’s the matter of the things that come out of his mouth once he’s on camera. As The Register recently quipped, “How can you tell Jimbo is lying? His lips are moving.” On Monday, July 20, Wales appeared on HuffPost Live, with Caroline Modarressy-Tehrani. Wales talked for a while about how TPOP was unique because cellular customers will see 10% of their monthly bill redirected to a charity of

…continue reading Jimmy Wales shames PR editors

How Jimmy Wales rode Tony Blair’s coattails

How Jimmy Wales married worked his way into Tony Blair’s circle and rode his coattails to legitimacy and comfort.

…continue reading How Jimmy Wales rode Tony Blair’s coattails

Wikipedia and pop culture ~ a special symbiosis

by Hersch

There may be a few of you out there who, like myself a few short hours ago, did not know that Lily Cole is the successful supermodel who put the “LOL” in “Lolita.” And then, just a few years ago, she adopted the business model that was first perfected by Bono, and augmented her career by becoming a social activist. All this inevitably attracted the attention of Wikipedia’s own Jimmy Wales, who gave his support to Cole’s project called “Impossible.com,” described as an “altruistic social network.” Those of you who have followed Jimmy’s career may now be asking, “Altruistic? But Jimmy is a devotee of Ayn Rand, who rejects altruism.” But as it turns out, Ms. Cole has made her own unique contribution to this debate:

When you give, you release chemicals – oxytosin [sic] – that make you happy. The act of giving is self-involved, it has enriched my life.

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…thus cutting the ethical Gordian Knot. This reasoning evidently impressed Jimmy, who told the Telegraph that:

She had a deep understanding of what in fact makes up a huge part of human life: doing nice things for each other with no expectation of any particular return.

Of course, not everyone was feeling the oxytosin. There was a snarky write-up in the Register. There is also a long-running discussion thread here at Wikipediocracy. But Cole’s project did attract the interest of the British government, which kicked in £200,000 to support the project.

Now, it goes without saying that Wikipedia has a biographical article on Ms. Cole. And although Pop Culture topics are the one area where

…continue reading Wikipedia and pop culture ~ a special symbiosis