It became one of the top memes of 2010. And just like that, it's gone.
Wikipedia announced this morning that they had reached their goal of $16,000,000 to keep the site ad-free, more than double their results from a year ago. Perhaps more impressive is that they did it in less time than any of their previous fundraisers.
As the world's 5th largest website, Wikipedia is a darling for the search engines as the closest thing the Internet can produce to an Encyclopedia. Because of the sheer volume of accumulated world knowledge, the crowdsourced junction of data has become the "go to" for everyone from students to criminal investigators.
Here are some stats about this year's fundraiser:
- Over 500,000 donations to the Wikimedia Foundation.
- Almost 130,000 donations to the local Wikimedia chapters world-wide.
- Two of the largest fundraising days in Wikipedia history.
- Average donation size: about $22.
- December 31, 2010, was the biggest fundraising day in the site's history.
Click the image below to see the live stats.
