Wikipedia is the largest and most popular encyclopedia on the internet. The site was officially launched by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger back in January 15, 2001. However a few years before that, Wikipedia was used to be called something else, and it served a different purpose.
History:
The concept of a digital encyclopedia wasn't exactly new when Wikipedia came out. Way back in 1993, Microsoft launched its own reference library called Encarta, which you can access by CD’s. In 1995, the renowned Encyclopedia Britannica started to digitise their content and put it online. And while all of this was happening, Jimmy Wales was starting to think about how he could revolutionise the way we consume porn.
In 1996, Jimmy Wales set up Bomis, a search engine for X-rated material. It became really successful that it raked in a lot of advertising money for Wales and his other two co-founders. Bomis was catered exclusively to wealthy men – the kind of men who were featured on cars and sports magazines. The site was such a major success (with 99% of the profit being driven by porn) that it propelled Wales and his partners into the internet stratosphere.
Bomis contained sections like "Bomis Babes," "Bomis Babe Report," and "Babe Engine". There was also “Bomis Premium”, a members-only section of the site where for the price of P150, you can access videos of “top-notch models baring it all”.
How Bomis became Wikipedia
Jimmy Wales sensed a change in the way people looked up information. So he jumped ship and used the funds and experience that he'd gathered to start the precursor to Wikipedia: Nupedia, which eventually turned to Wikipedia we all know today.
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