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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