Wikipedia founder: recession to hit websites

Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia, believes the global economy is headed for a “pretty serious recession” that will hit websites that are heavily reliant on advertising.

However, as the Daily Telegraph reports, he said that increasing job cuts and gloomy predictions sweeping Silicon Valley are an “excessive over reaction” as the expected slowdown will be nothing like the “bloodbath” of the 2000-2001 dotcom crash:

“It won’t be a 10pc collapse which kills everybody, but [advertising revenue] is going to drop and that is going to hurt people, a lot of marginal players are going to have serious problems…

I could see some of the major players’ stock suffering, some of them quite badly, but overall I don’t think it will be that bad…

We’ve been through somewhat of a boom but it has not been anything like the dotcom boom. A lot of start-ups out there are not yet profitable, but at least they have an idea of a business model and are mostly doing things that will work. But a lot of them will still fail.”

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