Some notes about Wikipedia from Jimmy Wales in Cape Town; spending at $3 million in 2007

Wendell Roelf from Reuters was able to grab some time for an interview with Jimmy Wales, Wikipedia founder during a conference in Cape Town, South Africa. Wikipedia was able to raise $1 million in donations last year and is expected to spend about $3 million in 2007.

I think Jimmy's quote regarding advertising is spot on considering that they are a non-profit company, "When we're turning down millions and millions of dollars in advertising revenue that could be used, to for example, put computers in schools in Africa … we have to very thoughtful and responsible about why we're doing it."

Wales also spoke about his new search engine expected to compete with Google and Yahoo, "Hopefully it's successful and would provide funding back to Wikipedia." Wendell noted that Wales said last month that Wikia is aiming to take as much as 5 percent of the lucrative Internet search market.

Check out our previous coverage of Wikipedia and the wiki format in general.