Wikipedia is 25. Founded in 2001, this community contributor-driven site has convincingly usurped what were once the default general reference works of choice, like Encyclopædia Britannica and Microsoft Encarta. Since its launch, this free resource has risen to become the world’s 7th most popular website, with over 7 million English articles, and around 7 billion monthly visitors. Wikipedia is the most successful non‑commercial, non‑social, non‑search web destination.
The first entry on Wikipedia was a computer-ritually headed "Hello, World!" and began with the rather amateurishly optimistic line “This is the new Wikipedia!” Co-founder Jimmy Wales, a former financial trader and best known as the face of Wikipedia (better known than Larry Sanger, anyway), uploaded the first Wikipedia edit. As an aside, this first page was recreated as a non-fungible token (NFT) in 2021, making $750,000 at auction.
