Omidyar Network, the investment arm of Pierre Omidyar’s wealth has made a $2 million grant. Pierre is the founder of eBay and his personal wealth is roughly $3.6 billion. The Omidyar Network was started in 2004 and there was about $270 million in assets given to the investment firm.
Some of the Internet companies that the Omidyar Network invested in include Digg, Federated Media Publishing, KaBOOM, Seesmic, Linden Lab, and Wikia. Wikia is another company that was founded by the Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales.
Wikipedia receives about 300 million monthly unique visitors and is the 5th most visited website in the world. However Wikipedia runs on donations and does not have any advertising. At the end of last year, about 125,000 donors invested $6.2 million in helping keep Wikipedia alive.
Of that $6.2 million, $3 million was given by the Sloan Foundation and an anonymous friend gave $286,800. As part of the investment, Matt Halprin of Omidyar will be joining the Wikimedia Foundation board of directors. Before working at Omidyar, Halprin was the VP of global trust and safety at eBay.
eBay founder Pierre Omidyar reported on Twitter about a ridiculous lawsuit that is being thrown at him. Omidyar, a billionaire, a start-up investor, and a philanthropist is the least likely person in the world to have anything to do with terrorists.
The lawyer suing Omidyar even own a website called Sueaerosmith.com. Omidyar tweeted that he plans to claim sueomidyar.com before that lawyer tries to get it.
John Picardy, a former special agent with the State Department recently filed a lawsuit against Omidyar for a wrongful termination. Picardy is also suing Omidyar’s wife, mother, and Sky River Management. Sky River Management, a firm in Honolulu handles the security for the Omidyar family. Picardy left his job at the State Department in Australia and joined Sky River at the beginning of 2008.
Picardy’s job only last four days. Sky River fired Picardy because he made a comment that was offensive to two fellow roommates. The comment was “What do you do when Jayson wants to get some face?” Picardy meant “going on a date” and “not having sex”.
Picardy believes that he was fired because Omidyar’s mother questioned his views on the Middle East. Picardy claims he was fired because he found out about the family airplane flying to Syria for meetings with Hamas. Picardy believes the Omidyars fired him “because they feared the reporting to the U.S. government of their activities.” Picardy wants a jury trial and punitive damages.
Omidyar is taking the situation quite lightly as indicated by his tweets. “I guess my chances of becoming President have gone up. Thank you, Sarah Palin!” tweeted Omidyar after writing about being sued for “palling around with terrorists.”
Pierre M. Omidyar, the Iranian-American philanthropist and founder/chairman of eBay that is worth about $7.7 billion is now working on a new business. Dan Primack of PEHub found a regulatory filing that lists Pierre as an executive of a company called Ginx. Although the company is still in stealth mode and requests users to provide their Twitter username/password and secret code, the company has raised $2 million according to the filing.
Ginx is believed to be a recommendation website based on Twitter. So if I do an action on the Internet and want to share it within the Ginx community, it will show that pulled website to other Twitter users through Ginx. It is able to show this action through a URL shortening service through Ginx. For an example, go to this website: http://ginx.com/-Bl6.
Omidyar seems to have a keen interest in social media so this type of service is right up his alley. One of the most interesting tweets I’ve read by Omidyar was during the Presidential Debates between Obama and McCain.
