World66.com is powered by Zope. Open content; hey it works!

AMSTERDAM, the Netherlands - June 1st, 2004 - Until recently World66 was one of the many travel portals that got funded in 2000 and barely managed to survive the breakdown of the new economy. The original idea was to setup an online travel guide, where people could recommend places to see and things to do. It was a good plan; but it never really took off. Until now.

In September 2003 the founders decided to change things. They revamped the site, changed the logo, but more importantly they went open content. They changed the site so that visitors can edit all the information on the site. If a visitor doesn't agree with the description of a restaurant, he/she just needs one click to change it. Of course every change is monitored and checked by an editorial staff in order to prevent "vandals" from deleting high quality content. Furthermore, the travel guide is published under a Creative Commons licence, which means that other parties can use the information freely. Also, we chose Zope as the platform for the site. Zope, open content and the structure of a travel web site are a perfect fit. A few months later the new strategy looks like a success: numbers of visitors are a tenfold of what they were before, travelers update the information frequently and surprise, surprise, there is even some money coming in.

In essence the plan hasn't changed. World66 is still a travel information portal where people can come and share their travel experiences. So why does it work now, when it didn't before? The difference lies in the guarantees the Creative Commons licence gives. The great thing of open content is that it's clear for the visitors why they would contribute. By adding their information to World66 they are not giving it to an organization they do not know who then goes on and publishes it to make money; they are giving it to the world. The information is not owned by World66, anyone can copy it, publish it, or distribute it as long as it respects the Creative Commons Licence. The difference between the old approach and the present one is astonishing. This week the 50,000-th article was written, with hundreds of new ones coming in every day.

And the income? Plain old advertising. It may not be enough for an IPO, but it makes it interesting for the founders to invest in collective mapping solutions, mobile solutions and much more.

About the Open Content movement

The Open Content movement is closely related to the more famous Open Source movement. Both publish their creative works under a free license allowing others to improve them and to use them for their own purposes free of cost. The Creative Commons work on providing a legal framework for organizations that want to publish their works under free licenses. Other open content initiative include Wikipedia.org and Wikitravel.org.

About World66

World66 is one of the most complete travel resources on the internet, thanks to more than 50.000 articles on 10.000 destinations all over the world. The company was founded by Douwe and Richard Osinga in 2000, went through the wild years of the Internet hype and came out with its soul untouched. Indeed, after a few years as a rather closed content project without a proper licence, it has now joined the open content community publishing its articles under the Creative Commons Licence. For more information, visit http://www.world66.com/about/technology