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MyWikiBiz, Author Your Legacy — Saturday November 22, 2008

MyWikiBiz
Slogan	Author Your Legacy
Type	Private
Founded	2006
Founder	Gregory J. Kohs
Headquarters	West Chester, Pennsylvania, USA
Key people	Gregory J. Kohs, CEO
Industry	Internet publishing Independent artists, writers, and performers
Products	See complete services listing
Owner	Gregory J. Kohs
Contact	MyWikiBiz.com 489 Lake George Circle West Chester, PA  US  19382-2188 302.463.1354  na www.mywikibiz.com   Email
Reference	Year End: 12/31 DUNS: 796762651 NAICS:51611 71151 Entity: Sole Latitude: 39°56′22.5″N Longitude: 75°36′42.4″W

MyWikiBiz is a wiki directory business that allows people and enterprises to author their own legacy on the Internet. The brand began as a service creating Wikipedia articles for paying corporations. The current Internet publishing site at MyWikiBiz.com uses a semantic web version of the famous MediaWiki software. The MyWikiBiz directory currently contains over 35,000 pages of content about corporations and individuals. The business is headquartered in West Chester, Pennsylvania, with its web server in California.

According to its main page:

MyWikiBiz is a new directory where you can author your legacy on the Internet. We think you are notable, even if Wikipedia has rejected an article about you or your enterprise as being "non-notable". With MyWikiBiz, you create a beautiful, reader-friendly page that will get picked up by Google, Yahoo!, and MSN Search engines.

Business propositions

MyWikiBiz suggests several reasons for contributing content to its directory. Unlike traditional encyclopedias, editors who are legally responsible for the entity they are writing about may "protect" their advocate point-of-view, without fear of someone else altering their content. Editors may also earn money at MyWikiBiz by creating a page, embedding Google AdSense ads within it, and keeping 100% of the revenues generated from that page's advertising. Page owners may also advertise and sell their products and services on MyWikiBiz. Contributors who are more interested in the community-edited dynamic of an encyclopedia like Wikipedia can do so with any topic that is not about a legal entity, such as "Jupiter" or "chess".

History of the site

Paid editing

Gregory Kohs and his sister started the MyWikiBiz venture in Pennsylvania in July 2006, initially as a paid editing service, writing encyclopedic content for inclusion in Wikipedia and other community-edited sites. Tiers of service were priced at $49, $79, and $99 per article. Kohs stated his intention to make neutral, sourced content, and expected the general public to continue altering and improving the articles he created. Although no official Wikipedia policy prohibited paid-for contributions, and although Wikipedia endorsed cash-for-editing via its Reward Board, Chairman Emeritus of the Wikimedia Foundation Jimmy Wales first called the commercialized editing "antithetical" to Wikipedia's mission.

However, in August 2006, Wales issued a "mutually beneficial" compromise [1] where he encouraged MyWikiBiz to author and post content on a GFDL-compliant section of MyWikiBiz.com, which could then be scraped by non-paid, independent editors into Wikipedia and other GFDL sites. Over the course of late 2006, financial conflicts of interest became regulated under Wikipedia's new conflict of interest policy.[2] In October 2006, despite there being little reason to do so, Wales aggressively reversed his earlier compromise with MyWikiBiz, banning the account from Wikipedia and cautioning any business from using its services. Days later, Wales issued MyWikiBiz a trademark violation complaint, but the legal threat was ignored, as it had no basis in law.

Centiare alliance and takeover

In late October 2006, the owner of Centiare.com reached out to Kohs to form a partnership that resulted in Kohs promoting and marketing the alternative wiki directory at Centiare. This effort gained strength through early 2007, but ultimately began to fade. When Centiare's owner opted to pull the plug on the site, Kohs negotiated a transfer of the entire contents of Centiare.com to MyWikiBiz.com. Thus, MyWikiBiz has undergone a substantial re-branding and re-purpose from its original mission.

A Wordle.net point of view

External links

• MyWikiBiz
• Original press release
• MyWikiBiz's Wikipedia contributions
• MyWikiBiz's Wikipedia block log
• Relaunch press release
• Biographical wikis press release

News coverage

• "Idea of paid entries roils Wikipedia" Brian Bergstein, Associated Press, January 24, 2007.
• Mainstream media story Over 150 publishers pick up the AP story
• "Wikipedia Blocks a Pay-for-Play Scheme", Brock Read, The Chronicle of Higher Education, January 24, 2007
• "Editing for hire leads to intervention" Wikipedia Signpost. August 14, 2006.
• "Wikipedia-Artikel, die man kaufen kann", Von Mathias Peer, Die Welt, August 24, 2006
• "Wikipedia Controversies: Victims of Wikipedia.... or Wiki Whiners?", Dan Tobias, Dan's Political and Controversial Site
• "Account used to create paid corporate entries shut down" Wikipedia Signpost. October 9, 2006.

Internal links

• Directory:MyWikiBiz is "owned" by User:MyWikiBiz.
• Thoughts from other sites

Geolocation

• Maps and aerial photos Coordinates: 39.939586787168835° -75.6117832660675°
  • Street map from Google Maps, or Yahoo! Maps, or Windows Live Local
  • Satellite image from Google Maps, Windows Live Local, WikiMapia
  • Topographic map from TopoZone
  • Aerial image or topographic map from TerraServer-USA

Additional Reading

• Read a 3-page presentation by Gregory Kohs about the advantages of a semantic web wiki directory (requires PowerPoint).
• Semantic web expert, Harry Chen, discusses our software implementation with "MediaWiki Opens for Business".
• IdeaGrove was the very first blog to profile Centiare, with a story entitled "Move Over Yellow Pages".