"Billionaire nerd with a social conscience" might describe Pierre Omidyar. Since founding eBay in 1995 and handing over the reigns of eBay to Meg Whitman, Omidyar and his wife Pam have found various ways to "do good" with their vast wealth.
In June of this year, the Omidyars created the Omidyar Network, an organization with simple core belief: "that every individual has the power to make a difference." The Omidyar Network will fund for-profit organizations as well as non-profits.
On Tuesday, Omidyar made the site open to the public and posted an announcement on his Blog (http://pierre.typepad.com).
Omidyar Network participated in a funding round of Socialtext, an enterprise social software-provider that uses Wiki and "makes it easy for workgroups to communicate effectively and build group memory, social capital and trust." According to the San Jose Mercury News, Socialtext gave away the Socialtext software to the Omidyar Foundation, which used it to create Omidyar Network.
Omidyar's Blog posting said the Network has funded efforts in microfinance; bottom-up media; open source; intellectual property; voting; and social software.
In addition to serving as Chairman of eBay and Omidyar Network, Omidyar is director of Meetup, a Web site that helps people self-organize local group gatherings on the same day everywhere. He also serves as a trustee of Tufts University and Santa Fe Institute, according to his biographical statement on the Omidyar Network site.
http://www.omidyar.net
