Geni said: " Omidyar Network? They were involved with a 4 million funding round for wikia back in 2006 no?
http://web.archive.org/web/20060422054638/http://www.americanventuremagazine.com/news.php?newsid=941 Appointing yet another person with wikia links looks kinda dicey no? -- geni " ++++++++++++++++++++++++ Matt Halprin only joined the Omidyar Network in July 2008, long after the Omidyar money was shuttled off to Wikia, Inc. http://www.linkedin.com/pub/matt-halprin/4/791/490 So, it's doubtful that Matt Halprin had any close ties personally to having made the decision to fund Wikia, Inc.; however, he is now a Partner at Omidyar, charged with a team that "pursues investments in Social Media" ( http://www.omidyar.com/team/matt-halprin )... so, he's almost undoubtedly on top of the Wikia return on investment, since Wikia is a Top 100 social media website. Being that we're all friends here, maybe Halprin could let us know if Omidyar has yet recouped its capital outlay in Wikia? Still, I have to agree with Geni -- it does indeed look very fishy to have a new WMF board member who's a partner at a firm that invested some portion of $4 million into the $14 million privately-held firm of the "Emeritus Chair" of the WMF. In fact, you'd be hard pressed to explain how this is just a "coincidence", being that there were probably more than a thousand other equally-qualified stars of social media who could have been selected, who have not a single tie back to funding Wikia, Inc. -- Gregory Kohs _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
