CYBERSPACE – Wikipedia has some wicked roots. According to a report in Business Insider, the Internet’s free encyclopedia co-founder and front man Jimmy Wales partly funded the site with money from a softcore porn venture called the “Bomis Babe Report.”
Wales reportedly launched a web search engine called Bomis (Bitter Old Men in Suits) in 1996 that included the porn site with photos of partially nude women and celebrities.
Although Wales claimed the site’s "mature audience" section yielded only about 10 percent of its revenues, Wikipedia’s own entry about Bomis suggests it accounted for much more — including some hardcore offerings.
“Bomis ran a website called Bomis Premium at premium.bomis.com until 2005, offering customers access to premium, X-rated pornographic content,” Wikpedia says.
"Bomis created and hosted web rings around search terms popular among male users. The rings were categorized broadly as "Babe," "Entertainment,","Sports,","Adult," "Science fiction," and "Other." The "Adult," "Babe,",and "Entertainment" categories were the most frequently updated and the most popular."
Wale’s Bomis also hosted nekkid.info, a place "to see sexy naked women," and "The Babe Engine," an image search engine to find hot girls.
The WIkipedia founder also reportedly donated the initial bandwidth and server needs in Wikipedia’s early days that came from monies generated by Bomis.