A presentation by Lennart Guldbrandsson about how brands can work with Wikipedia.

1. Wikipedia and branding

2. Introduction
 What I won't talk about
 What I will talk about
 How Wikipedia works
 How to use Wikipedia

3. Wikipedia from the outside
The history of Wikipedia
1980-1990s – internet, first catalogues, then search
engines
 2000 – the dot-com bubble collapses, Nupedia
 2001 – launch of Wikipedia
 2003 – Wikimedia Foundation
 2008 – 23 employees

4. Wikipedia from the outside
 61% of you come from Google (Nielsen Online)
 4th most popular property on the Internet (28.2%
of the 996 million worldwide PC-based web
browser audience (comScore)
 20 – 45 000 page views – per second
 Estimated worth: 7 billion US dollars (Silicon Alley Insider)
Real revenue: 2,734,909 (2007)

5. How Wikipedia works
(for companies)
"Imagine a world in which every
single person on the planet is given
free access to the sum of all human
knowledge.
That’s what we are doing."
- Jimmy Wales

6. How Wikipedia works
(for companies)
Wikipedia is a...
 freely licensed
 and free of charge
 encyclopedia of 12 million articles
 written by 15 million volunteers
 in more than 250 languages

7. How Wikipedia works
(for companies)
+ =

Click ”edit”
 Write
 Click ”save” No need to register

8. How Wikipedia works
(for companies)
Quality management on Wikipedia
 Version handling – article history
 Recent changes monitored
 Watchlists
 User contributions leave tracks
 Many enthusiastic volunteers

9. How Wikipedia works
(for companies)
Wikipedia and its competitors
 collaborative vs experts
 having to get along vs own articles
 style and own perspective is not scaleable
 not-for-profit vs ad-driven
 work in progress vs ready from the get-go

10. Using Wikipedia (for companies)
What if the Wikipedia article about your company
is wrong
1) write on talk page
2) contact us – Report an error
3) info-en-q@wikimedia.org
Ask other wikipedians for help

11. Using Wikipedia (for companies)
Your article on Wikipedia
 only helpful if you already have traffic, i.e. is notable
 if you try, take your time – learn and pay your dues
 remember that you are accountable
 ask for help
 don't delete – add
and as always, must be copyleft

12. Using Wikipedia (for companies)
Seldom used ways of marketing on Wikipedia
 donate money, like Alfred P. Sloan
 fix something for Wikimedia Foundation, like Yahoo
 write an featured article about you
 have a user to answer questions about you on
Wikipedia
 donate pictures – find your niche
Let me give you an example...

13. Using Wikipedia (for companies)
Michele Merkin
Featured image
Beauty
Glamour photography
Physical attractiveness
Here
is your chance!

14. Questions?
Don' be shy. Or in
Wikipedia vernacular:
Be bold.