Encyclopedia Britannica often is used in case studies as a definitive example of how new technology can disrupt a business. Everything was great for the nearly 250 year old privately held company until the Internet came around and a Category Five hurricaned on their parade. According to Comscore, for every page viewed on Brittanica.com, 184 pages are viewed on Wikipedia (3.8 billion v. 21 million pave views per month). In short, they are a classic example of the Innovator’s Dilemma (see also the Music Industry).
You can purchase the 32 volume Britannica, which has 65,000 articles and 44 million words, for just $1,400. Or you can access it on the web for $70 per year.
And now, you can get access to the online version for free through a new program called Britannica Webshare – provided that you are a “web publisher.” The definition of a web publisher is rather squishy: “This program is intended for people who publish with some regularity on the Internet, be they bloggers, webmasters, or writers. We reserve the right to deny participation to anyone who in our judgment doesn’t qualify.” Basically, you sign up, tell them about your site URL and a description, and they review it and decide if you’ll get in. I wonder if Facebook, MySpace and Twitter users are eligible? They all certainly “publish with some regularity on the Internet.”
Once you’re in, you get to link to the full version of articles – people clicking the link can read that article but they can’t go and read other parts of the Britannica site. Participants can also embed widgets like the following:
Half Pregnant
Britannica is doing a lot of things right – a relatively small staff of a hundred or so editors manages 4,000 unpaid (I believe) contributors who are recognized experts in their field. But, like the music labels, they still somehow feel as though people should pay to consume their content. And that means search engines can’t index their content. And that means they don’t exist.
Instead of going free and opening up to all, they’re using the new program to simply price discriminate. Give people who may link to the site free access. Everyone else has to pay. So in effect they’re aiming to be half pregnant – they want the benefits of web linking but don’t want to give up the subscription fees from the fools who continue to pay them.
As an outsider, Britannica’s future is clear. Eventually, and if they don’t go out of business first, they’ll be forced to make all their content freely available on the Internet, and will probably create a wiki-like format that allows user editing. Their differentiating factor from Wikipedia will be that they have experts guiding articles, so they’ll have a claim to be more authoritative. This is, by the way, the business model of Citizendium, created by Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger in 2006.
The sooner they do that the more likely they’ll be around for the long term. Perhaps they can even continue to sell those 32 volume sets to a few libraries. But it’s hard to give up that online subscription revenue. When this fails, they’ll try something else.
Actually, Encarta (on CD) was the first to rain on the parade.
that was just a light sprinkle.
as much as i like wikipedia, its just not comparable to the encyclopedia britannica. Someone needs to archive the truth, and i dont know if wiki is capable of that
We now have an alternative to wikipedia, albeit not as hip and current… Hmm, I will probably forget about Encylopedia Britannica again for the next year or two.
Thanks for the heads up. I will apply for access. No doubt you are right about the biz model. Good analysis.
I doubt that EB will go wiki because that model is simply FUBAR.
I suspect that EB will need to find another model of web distribution.
Old school mentalities with gated gardens die hard. Good to see them attempting to adopt to reality. Maybe they will start evolving more quickly before it is too late.
If Wikipedia were the “hurricane” that ruined EB’s parade, then Google Search would be the big old Tsunami.
EB’s move is one timid step in the right direction. I feel bad for anyone who is working in the dead-tree business.
The day Google posted record profit, New York Times posted record loss. So it goes.
Too little too late unfortunately…
Interesting angle. If they begin to get bloggers to use it the blogs themselves become their tie to the search engines. So over time each page of the online set would become available to all if only through the link(s) of specific blogs. Which actually is probably a big % of Wikipedia’s traffic. I think they might have something here. Think also of how the subscription site ExpertExchange works … where they are searchable but not viewable (I actually don’t like that model but some do). Curious why they haven’t done that yet.
FYI, there was a documentary @ NextWeb in Amsterdam that covered Wikipedia, Jimmy, Larry, and Brittanica a month back. If you are interested in the backstory I took notes on it and posted comments here:
http://timbauer...-you-dont-know/
Or if you have time on your hands (~40m) you could watch the whole thing here:
http://thenextw...g-to-wikipedia/
Michael, I hope they do it really quickly. Wikipedia is half broken! Most of the time you wind up arguing that the earth is round and it revolves around the sun, not the other way around like a few still think!
The mass deletionists just want to cut the articles down to small pieces and then get rid of what is left via a deletion process. I do not like it, Delete, Delete, Delete!
Reasoning and consensus just does not work with these type of people. It is not that they are right or wrong, is that they got the Power! You disagree with them they will come up with some lame excuse to ban you!
See for yourself
http://www.igor...rger-mediation/
Ok late, but not later than Web 3.0…
@ Mike Arrington re: Encarta
By 2000, encyclopedia sales were 10% of their 1990 record highs.
This was mainly Encarta’s (Microsoft) fault.
Nice news
I will give it a try
Sorry but as usual web 2.0 “gurus” only understand a small portion of the real story.
The economics of the current web simply don’t support a web 2.0 utopian view of content creation.
Great content produced by a business requires real business models, not “put adsense next to it” business models. Adsense is by far the most efficient way to monetize reference content, and it simply does not, and cannot, pay enough to create expert, authoritative, edited content. A few rules:
1. When people are in “research mode” they don’t look at, or care about ads, no matter how relevant.
2. Perceived value is value. Paid content monetizes better then ad-driven content for content which is valuable.
3. Opening up Britannica completely destroys their perceived value, as suddenly they are competing directly with Wikipedia, rather then creating a superior, paid-for version.
4. Paid content works. Ask WSJ.com, ask enotes.com, ask audible.com, ask all the niche content providers on the web.
5. This move is about Google, not wikipedia per se. They need incoming links to rise higher in Google.
Oh and #6– the library market is 100x bigger then the ad market for reference content. Think about that for ten seconds. Britannica derives most of their profit from the library market.
Igor The Troll claims wikipedia is “half-broken” and points to this as proof:
http://www.igor...rger-mediation/
At cursory glance he violated enough rules to get banned from contribution and assigned a mentor.
After reading his talk page, this sound like another vindication of the (iterative and) difficult balancing act that wikipedia engages in. How many trolls does it take to write wikipedia? Answer: none.
And, this is off-topic to EB, unless he was claiming that EB will re-emerge as wikipedia continues to “brake” [sic]
harold, good points. I guess you are not spending your valuable time arguing with Wikipedia Trolls.
Maybe Britannica can do a nonprofit online version and collect donations like Wikipedia but have real editors with Brains edit articles not Neanderthals bashing acknowledged editors on the head with delete bats.
I don’t think that Britannica is likely to do well either but I think that this: “As an outsider, Britannica’s future is clear. Eventually, and if they don’t go out of business first, they’ll be forced to make all their content freely available on the Internet, and will probably create a wiki-like format that allows user editing. Their differentiating factor from Wikipedia will be that they have experts guiding articles, so they’ll have a claim to be more authoritative. This is, by the way, the business model of Citizendium, created by Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger in 2006.” is a bit too certain about their future.
The fact is, this is still a very new environment. We don’t know exactly how it will work out. Wikipedia has worked phenomenally well, despite initial doubts from many (like myself) that such a system could ever function in the presence of vandals.
However, marketing agencies have still not had time to incorporate Wikipedia into their efforts. Wikipedia relies on the fact that volunteer contributors are more dedicated than vandals and trolls (and generally more conversant with the Wikipedia system; I would guess that many trolls do not realize the ease with which an editor can identify multiple edits from the same address and revert them once one change is made). However, when there are businessmen working 24/7 to manipulate Wikipedia, things may become different. Wikipedia articles on popular politicial figures often suffer a certain degree of bias today; it can be expected that product and company web pages would be possible targets for marketing efforts.
Wikipedia will change and evolve and perhaps fork as well. I doubt that the Wikipedia of ten years from today will look exactly the same as the Wikipedia of today. Citizendium may work or may not. Perhaps the technological infrastructure for micropayments will make commercial availability of reference works more feasibility, or perhaps ISPs will begin to sell access to services as part of their bundle of services. Frankly, we don’t know what will happen yet, and I don’t think that it’s reasonable to definitively say what Britannica will need to do.
If I were Britannica, I’d probably do the following:
* Start gathering particularly egregious examples of incorrect facts that have shown up on Wikipedia, and work to build an image as being more reliable. Build a list of these and put them on a website that customers can be directed to to demonstrate the issues.
* Offer an ad-based service (possible in addition to the subscription-based service).
* Bill the fact that their English is significantly better edited, and that people learn to write English from what they read. Wikipedia might teach poor writing skills to schoolchildren.
* Use Wikipedia as a base to identify new facts. Wikipedia is of value to Britannica as well — perhaps Britannica needs to verify information, but they can find new facts on Wikipedia.
* Wait a bit. Wikipedia has its own problems — yes, Britannica may have business trouble, but Wikipedia still doesn’t have enough funding coming in consistently to ensure that it will keep operating. It may eventually run out of money and need to move to a different environment.
* Consider providing Britannica access to an ISP’s customers at a low rate. This could be a value-add for an ISP.
* Expand the market. The Internet may increase competition, but it also increases the number of available customers. Wikipedia English is good, but how solid is Wikipedia Chinese?
* Take the offensive against Wikipedia. Wikipedia has a lot of material that is, frankly, copyright-infringing. Some of this could probably be picked up with a bot to search through revisions and perform Google searches. Keep Wikipedia removing material.
* Provide material that Wikipedia can’t. Wikipedia can’t include any non-free media that is not available under fair-use, as it has the restriction without operating in such a way as to pay third parties. Britannica can do so. It’s possible to stick commercial images and photographs on Britannica. Allocate part of a user’s fees to paying for third-party content. When a user views some media, a certain percentage of their user fees wind up allocated to that third party. The same approach might work if Britannica joins forces with other established reference sources — they can provide access to non-free content, which Wikipedia generally cannot.
Personally, I really like Wikipedia, but I wouldn’t be so ready to write Britannica off yet.
It’s Wiki that’s the hurricane. And Google with the freely accessible service and the ad-funded business model. At work I have free access to Britannica and the Swedish National Encyclopedia. I rarely check them out unless Google or Wiki fail me or there’s a niggling question in my mind about their results, and I definitely don’t automatically consider any of them to be more authoritative than the others out of the box so to speak. The OED (online with subscription) has a good claim to authority, mind, as does the dictionary section of the National Encyclopedia, but such authority is very rare, and Google is indispensable for digging up possible second opinions.
Roll on free Net access to all printed material – we’ll think of ways of evaluating and digesting it.
And everyone should (re)read Walter Benjamin on the Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction (1936). A seminal work.
http://www.marx...ge/benjamin.htm
Richard, did you come down from the project to cite policy.
I do not think Michael’s blog will let Wikipedia link in comments because of Akismet, but go check out “Social network aggregation” on Wikipedia and you will see it just went through a deletion process. It was luckily a keep, but you had hoards of editors and admins argue that the term is not notable. Please give me a break!
i don’t see any reason why EB would have to go the wiki route.
making their stuff available for free online? sure. but wiki? why?
Encyclopedia Britannica used to be the Google of it’s day for college students
EB will either go under or move to some kind of web-based model, in which case they will go under eventually.
Nothing lasts on the web, even Yahoo is on the block now. It’ a metaphor for our times, everything is temporary and the experience to the end user is of lower quality.
Things move quickly in the age of Walmart and China and the web, and most of it sucks.
Re. web based models, I think Mark in post 18 had some great ideas. But they at best just delay the inevitable.
or some large corporation could buy them to use the brand name, to create an online competitor for wikipedia and others.
what you must realise is the academic prestige of writing an article for the EB: that goes onto resumes and impresses the betweeded, leather elbow-patched consortium. Ergo, you have the means of production. The outlet will then decide itself, probably web-based
Even with all the fuss about user-generated content and constant updating, there are clear advantages for having a definitive and unchanging edition, be that online or in print.
For any research purposes, wikipedia is totally unquotable, while EB isn’t. Also, for today’s historians (especially for ones interested in the history of thought), EB editions from the beginning of the last century are a gold mine, and current editions will be in the future. If articles just evolve and change all the time, the aspect of being able to see what the zeitgeist was regarding things like, say, music, art, China, American Civil War, pasta, internet, venture capital… is lost.
Encyclopedia isn’t just about “facts”, it’s also cultural history. And having a system that can verify the facts in the encyclopedia, the structure that EB has in place and that Citizendium is putting up is still the way to go. While I think it would be great if EB would go fully and freely online, I hope they never allow user editing. Instead, there should be other ways of contributing, if deemed necessary. But being able to afford free online distribution by externalising content production to a bunch of keen amateurs isn’t they way to go.
I pity EB!
Well Wikipedia is not totally lost. It can work but they need to hire professional editors to oversee the process. The armatures can build the article but a professional editor needs to approve it.
If this will be the framework, you will not have bickering and infighting between editors because everyone will know the truth cannot be distorted to meet some desired political agenda.
Let’s say an editor goes to article dealing with Chinese history and were is says “Marco Polo after encountering noodles in China brought them to Italy.” But some editor just wants to make China look bad and changes the sentence to “Marco Polo brought noodles from Italy to China.”
As you can see the change is very subtle and to an untrained editor may mean nothing! Why was this done in the first place? The editor who doctored the article wants to make China look bad, for whatever political agenda that he may have.
Now some child reads this article thinking that the noodles were invented by Italians not Chinese and goes around the school pocking fun at Chinese kids! I hope you getting my point here.
Social engineering of Wikipedia by special interest groups with alternative objective is real, direct or indirect.
This is just a simple story but things get worse. I do not really want to bash Wikipedia, because there is good there, but there is bad and Wikipedia as a community not really dealing with it, but just brushing things under the rug
In order to be an editor on Wikipedia you need to be quiet. You speak out and criticize anything about the community, you get the ax!
I find it ludicrous for people to criticize overs left and right but not to take any criticism from others.
Wikipedia to survive needs to look inwards and self-evaluate itself to see what needs to be improved.
Oh, here the Chinese and Italian noodle debacle.
Have a read and see who won!
http://query.ny...;pagewanted=all
harold had a fine argument. I like your analysis.
Another example of how the power of mass collaboration via Wikipedia trumps the elitist subject matter experts. I’m surprised that they still survived, they should’ve made their content free a long time ago, man these people are slow!
donations are the business model of wikipedia. how long does it take that a charity like the soros foundation understands the chance before google comes by and gobbles up britannica to boost up their search. the principle of falsification is well implemented in open source culture to continue the original project of diderot and d’alambert shortly interrupted by the pyramid games of web2.0.
Pretty cool, I’m going to apply as soon as I finish writing this!
On the EB/Wikipedia arguement, mark (#18), has some pretty good ideas. I think that EB’s main selling point is that it’s not edited by the masses, there has a very small possibility of containing innaccurate information. I don’t think they should go wiki, but they could go free, if they can make it work. Also, they still, at least for several years, will be selling hard copies, which can’t hurt the bottom line.
Or, EB could just go into aquisition mode & buy Wikipedia.
A couple of years ago EB contacted me because of my blog, and offered me free access to their site with deep-linking ability. I accepted and tried it out a couple of times…but then I went back to linking to other sources, sometimes Wikipedia, because:
1) Google is just faster at finding me links to the information I want, sometimes Wikipedia was at the top of the list, sometimes not.
2) It was a pain to go to one specific site (EB) to search and *hope* they had a matching topic that I would consider of quality to link to. Why take that extra step when 95% of the time I could get a link of equal or superior quality from elsewhere on the web?
3) I had to ponder questions like “If a commercial site gives me free access and I link to it, am I giving them preferential treatment? Am I doing a disservice to my readers?” They give me free EB access in the hopes of selling more product, even if it is in an indirect way by increasing their rep through linking. I ended up adding a disclaimer when I linked to them and it just felt weird, so I stopped using them altogether.
I guess they had enough success with their pilot programs to offer this service to a wider audience, so perhaps I was in the minority with my opinions.
Hum… sounds like Brittannica will be pulled into a huge black hole of deciding who qualifies for free access and who doesn’t.
Good news….it’s nice to see an unbiased source available for free.
I blog. I’d never link to it. Why encourage a site that thinks it can be above the rest of the Net. Wikipedia, for all its flaws — and they are legion! — has more entries about more pertinent and cutting-edge topcs than this fossil could ever manage. Bury it. The corpse is giving off a stink!
EB should partner with Zemanta and get their blog content suggestion engine to include EB or come up with a separate WP plugin for just EB content. That could save the need for bloggers having to explicitly look at EB every time they need a reference link.
@dj hojo: If you’re referring to EB as your “unbiased source” you’re out of your scholarly mind! There’s a vast difference between putting on a show of “neutrality” and actually covering a topic with an encyclopaedic perspective. The reason WikiP gets its knickers into so many twists is that the infighting over controversial issues is out in the open. We should welcome this! What we have to condemn is the ridiculous attempt of so many one-dimensional idiots to formalize rules for neutrality, citation, original and non-original thought, and then, thinking they’ve succeeded, trying to apply them and gag ideological or even just temperamental “deviants”.
EB hides all this behind the screen of commercial privilege, business secrecy, and a biased choice of editors. One of WikiP’s fun aspects is the ambition to create articles that match commercial encyclopaedias (like EP) and frequently knock them into a cocked hat.
As for the idea that it’s good to have a time slice of frozen knowledge like a print EB, that’s fair enough if (as some people are here) you are fully aware that it will be partial, biased, sometimes plain wrong, and out of date the second it appears. You can make such a slice of WikiP, as it has done itself, and publish it as a CD. Same problems. WikiP is a work in progress that is openly so. EB pretends to be definitive. I prefer the WikiP approach.
And since when has the EB shown any awareness of other-language reference works? WikiP gives direct references to articles on the same topic in other languages. The differences are often substantial and well worth looking into for a broader understanding of the topic.
This is an excellent post. I’m glad Mike has done it. It is allowing us to examine and shed light on the whole online encyclopedic model. I am also glad to see many commentators responding in an objective matter.
So we here, sharing knowledge about our experiences and believes, are elitists? Being an elitist is nothing wrong with it. Through out history the people in the top echelons of society gave and contributed to the studies.
But the masses always want to deride us, as evil. Knowledge is power ignorance is bliss.
I doubt they can give access to bloggers using other languages… How does EB qualify them by not knowing the meaning of what they had posted?
#14 has the best post here
I got a free access submitting my French website!
Do they really verify what we submit? I do not think so. I guess they just read the summary attached to the link you submit.
Harold destroyed this comment discussion. I’m glad that I went to school in the Google age and not the EB age. Papercuts sting.
Well I am really happy there is an alternative to Wikipedia today.
The more I learn about Wikipedia the more it stinks.
CIA and other special interest groups confirmed by BBC and NY Times are editing articles to distort the content using Wikipedia as a propaganda machine.
Wait, they want us to link to them for free?! No affiliate program!? They got to be kidding.
Wikipedia Now Free For Everyone
Wikipedia free for everyone is a Joke..:)
Its like Google does no Evil. If you believe that, you need to wake up!
Igor, why not? What do mean when saying that wiki isn’t free and google do evil? Maybe I’m naive but I truly believe that google and wiki do for net much more then any other project. IMHO