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Chris Whitten

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Mr. Chris I. Whitten
Born 1970's.

Profile manager: Chris Whitten | Chris has made 12321 contributions | Last profile change on 17 March 2010
17:53: Chris Whitten deleted a message from Maureen O'Connor on the page for Chris Whitten.
This page has been accessed 8,980 times.
Categories: WikiTree Staff

Chris is the creator of this website, WikiTree, as well as WikiAnswers, Free-Market.Net, and other websites.

You can e-mail him at chris -at- wikitree.com (replace the -a- with @).


Chris grew up in Fitchburg, Massachusetts, with his mother Donna and brother Ted. His father Ted and step-mother Vicki were in the nearby town of Ashby.

In 1989 he graduated from Fitchburg High School and started at Lyndon State College in the beautiful Northeast Kingdom of Vermont. After two years in the small business program there he transferred to New York University to study economics. He graduated from NYU in 1993.

After college he stayed in New York City and worked as the managing editor of a mail order book catalog called Laissez Faire Books. Before Amazon.com this was the only source for many unusual books on libertarian philosophy and free-market economics. In 1994, he started experimenting with the Internet to sell books for Laissez Faire. The e-mail update list he created there was one of the first of its kind.

In 1995 Chris left his job to create a libertarian community and networking site called Free-Market.Net: The Freedom Network. This site has been called "the mother of all libertarian websites" for its early work in promoting usage of the Internet among free-marketeers of all stripes.

In 1997 he created a non-profit organization in Chicago called The Henry Hazlitt Foundation to be a home for FMN and its newer sister sites including libertarian.org, ifeminists.com and Bureaucrash. The foundation grew to employ five people full-time and more than a dozen people part-time.

In 2000 Chris met Megan McClellan who was finishing her math degree at the University of Chicago.

In 2001 Chris retired from his non-profit work to be more entrepreneurial again. And to pay off his student loans.

In 2002 Chris created FAQ Farm, which later became WikiAnswers. It is a collaborative question and answer site where users can ask a question about anything and other users help answer them. The Q&As become permanent resources so that the same question never has to be asked twice.

In 2004 Chris moved back from Chicago to New York City. Megan was offered a job on Wall Street. The next year, in 2005, Megan was offered a job in London and they took that opportunity to see Europe.

In 2006 Chris and Megan returned from England. They bought a home in Croton-on-Hudson in northern Westchester County, NY.

Late that year Chris sold his WikiAnswers business to Answers.com. During 2007 he worked with Answers.com to integrate the site into their company and take advantage of the new economies of scale.

In both 2007 and 2008 WikiAnswers was the fastest growing site among the largest US websites. It is now a top 25 website and gets over three million visitors per day.

In 2008 Chris began work on this site, WikiTree.

[Note: The memories (1), photos (192) and family tree for Chris are not public.]

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Please add a message for Chris or about Chris's life.

On January 25, An anonymous user at 98.193.202.50 wrote:

January 25, 2010

Hi Chris.
My name is Marionetta. I just found your pictures of trees for family history. Like them. What I want to tell you is that I am a college student, in my second English class and learning about, well the class is, I am my family's genealogist, copyrighting and stuff.

I am writing to you to tell you that I am using your Free Permission statement to show to my class that some websites do state that the author, as my instructor calls people like you will give you permission on line or by email.

Bet you never expected this to happen. I will read everything to them as you put online, as I am printing a copy of the complete site to bring with me to class.

Marionetta Johns


On January 22, Daniel Huggler wrote:

Chris,
How do make my family tree creation visible to people searching this site? I can't seem to find where to unlock it.


On January 22, Daniel Huggler wrote:

Thank you for your creation. You are most helpfull.


On January 3, Kelly Gottsponer wrote:

Thanks for creating such a wonderful site! So far I LOVE all of the features, but I do have one request...
Is it possible to "delete" an entry? I looked through the help section and tried the instructions there but it didn't quite work. I saw the info for "merge" but I wish that there was a way to simply delete an entry.


On January 2, Alan Schindler wrote:

Thanks, Chris. I'm having a great time and still have a lot of data to add.


On December 15, Crayton Smith wrote:

Thanks, Chris. So far I al LOVING the site, and have a ton of data to add.


On December 7, An anonymous user at 96.10.59.61 wrote:

Hello Chris, i just have one question. I have been told that im related to a person from a long time ago and i found him on Wikitree. i was wondering if you know the best way to research my family history so i can try to link my family tree with his?


On December 2, An anonymous user at 74.235.230.221 wrote:

FreeMarket.net had regular contests. I won one of them. It was an ounce of gold. I need to get in touch with that metal dealer but have lost all of the contact information. He was a regular advertiser on your old site I believe. Can you help me?


On November 23, Lisa Flansburg wrote:

I am the daughter of Robert and wanda Flansburg and I am wanting to create a family tree starting with them. Could you help me to do that? Counting my mom and dad there are about 75 to 100 people in our family.


On November 19, Dee Beach wrote:

I love this site but I am having trouble with it questioning my certainty of my own information...I go in and press that I am certain and resave the info but it always goes back to asking if I am sure on my profile page...any help would be great!