Wikimedia Will Move To San Francisco

At this point, Mountain View, California more or less is Google.  Everyone knows Microsoft’s based in Redmond, and Yahoo’s associated with Sunnyvale.  Now, shaking things up, Wikimedia will move from St. Petersburg, Florida to San Francisco.

Granted, the move’s not that much of a shocker – given the user-generated nature of Wikimedia’s properties, the physical location of its headquarters doesn’t matter to most people.  But this begs the question: why move at all?

It could be that Wikimedia’s employees are tired of living in a city that has its own hurricane information site.  Also, Valleywag relays an official Wikimedia statement claiming that San Francisco’s “proximity to Asia . . . is expected to enable the Foundation to form closer ties with volunteers and potential partners in that part of the world.”

Really?  Emails and telephone calls are basically the same whether they originate in Florida or California.  However, given the success of Wikimania 2007 (which was held in Asia), the “proximity” excuse may to hold up.

Now we’ll just wait for Wikipedia to get updated with information about the move.  In this case, the site was a little slow to the punch, but it may become a go-to source for further information.