The Wikimedia Foundation, the non-profit parent company of Wikipedia, announced that it's decamping from St. Petersburg, Florida and will be headquartered in San Francisco as of February 2008.
FounderJimmy Wales (right) will still keep his official home address in St. Pete, but as Wikimedia's press spokesperson Sandra Ordonez noted, he already spends more time in San Francisco as it is. (For-profit Wikia is based in nearby San Mateo.) Wikipedia's main server farm will remain in Tampa.
Roughly half of Wikimedia's six staff are planning to move to the Bay Area and the company says it expects to see its overall headcount rise. Hiring for the San Francisco HQ will begin in a few weeks.
Other cities that were in contention include London, New York, Boston, Washington D.C., and status quo St. Petersburg. San Francisco won out for its tech resources including talent and, presumably, money. "The creativity there is so phenomenal," sighs Ordonez, who is among the employees not able to switch coasts.
She also adds that the Foundation is happy to entertain offers of free office space. She might want to keep an eye on the much rumored Bubble 2.0—last time around there was plenty of cheap SOMA real estate...
