[WikiEN-l] Wikipedia more popular than Britannica!

Sun Jul 6 23:22:42 UTC 2003

If only Wikimedia could buy out EB........cheap......Imagine!!
Ec

Erik Moeller wrote:

>Toby-
>
>>Jimmy Wales wrote:
>>
>>>So, this is pretty interesting.  According to Alexa.com, Wikipedia is
>>>now more popular than Britannica.
>>>
>>We should probably keep in mind that Britannica is also available in print.
>>In fact, that's the brand's traditional medium.
>>
>
>Encarta has very much harmed Britannica's print sales. Britannica counted  
>on their brand name and image, but even many of their customers did not  
>see why they would have to pay thousands of dollars for a paper  
>encyclopedia when they could get a decent encyclopedia, plus lots of  
>multimedia stuff, maps etc. for 100 bucks or less, and the whole thing  
>would fit neatly into their back pocket.
>
>Swiss investor Jacob Safra bought Britannica in 1996 (it's still based in  
>Chicago), and the sales staff for the paper version was fired shortly  
>thereafter. Since then the focus has been almost exclusively on the  
>Internet and CD-ROM version, which was massively reduced in price and is  
>now dirt cheap. For some time they even had the full text online --  
>remember, those were the dot com days.
>
>Things are looking pretty grim for Britannica. Their Java-based software  
>is a piece of crap, and Encarta has much better marketing. They still have  
>their original content bonus, but even in terms of content they have  
>massive weaknesses in some areas (for example, compare their article on  
>circumcision with ours). I think the Britannica brand will live on, but in  
>terms of competition we should be more worried about Encarta (and vice  
>versa).
>
>Regards,
>
>Erik
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