Jimmy Wales’ on The Future of Web 2.0 and His Tips for Entrepreneurs

Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia, sat down in London for an interview with the Online Information 2007 group before the conference in London next week. The full interview is available on Facebook and I’ve grabbed a couple interesting snippits below.

Where do you see Wikipedia in ten years?
JW: When I think about Wikipedia in ten years I mostly have been focussing my attention on the growth of the languages of the developing world. So I’ve been to South Africa twice this year so far. I’m going again in November and again in March. I’m really trying to promote the growth in the languages of Africa because right now we don’t have a lot of content there. One of the things I look at when I look at long term trends is there’s about a billion people online now and we expect to see another billion coming online in the next 10 years or so. Not from the US or Japan or places like that- we’re already online for the most part. It’s coming from the next stage- South America, India, Africa. All joining the global conversation.

What’s the future of Web 2.0?
JW: I think we’re just at the beginnings of seeing mass participation and collaboration. I think we’re gonna see things we haven’t seen before- especially in music and video. Particularly I think documentary film is an area people could collaborate on.

Finally, any tips for would-be entrepreneurs?
JW: First found a charity that becomes the number nine website on the internet- it just makes starting a for-profit company a lot easier!