Wikipedia voted best site of the noughties by Netimperative readers
Wikipedia has beaten YouTube, Facebook and Twitter to be voted the best website launched in the last decade, according to a poll of Netimperative readers. The online poll indicated that Wikipedia, founded in January 2001 by Jimmy Wales, was the most popular website of the noughties, with nearly 42% of the votes.
Despite repeated attempts to compromise its integrity, Wikipedia remains the most popular online encyclopedia on the Web. Perhaps more than any other site, Wikipedia has embodied the true potential of the web as a place to share and distribute knowledge throughout the world.
Since anyone can create or edit a Wikipedia page, both companies and individuals have been caught airbrushing and embellishing their own entries. The Wiki community usually intervenes, with egregious edits reported on WikiScanner.
The site is funded largely by user donations, and it regularly meets it financial targets- how many other websites could exist on the same business model?
Speaking about the company’s business model, Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales said: "Like a national park or a school, we don't believe advertising should have a place in Wikipedia".
“Wikipedia is more than a website. We share a common cause: Imagine a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge. That's our commitment,” Wales added.
Video-sharing site Youtube was the runner-up in the Netimperative poll, getting 26% of the vote. The site was founded in February 2005, and was bought Google in 2006 following a surge in popularity.
Social network Facebook came a close third in the poll, with nearly a quarter (25%) of the votes. Facebook was founded in 2006 by Mark Zukerberg, eventually toppling MySpace as the most popular social network in the world.
Twitter was voted fourth most popular site, starting out in 2006. In 2008, the micro-blogging site souard in popularity, defining a new way of communicating on the web and popularizing the concept of real-time and crowd-sourced search, now imitated by the likes of Google.
You can now vote in Netimperative’s latest poll: Digital Economy Act: Fair of Farce?. Illegal downloaders could soon be banned from the web after the Digital Economy Act was passed this month amid much controversy. But what effect do you think the law will have on piracy?