Please Let Me Jump Through Another Hoop … Please!
April 20th, 2008 by Chief NutYou can’t envy Encyclopedia Britannica. But if you’re caught in a fading industry, you need to either completely re-invent yourself (a la ReImagine by Tom Peters), or quit (a la The Dip by Seth Godin). The last thing you should do is make your system even more inconvenient.
The Wiki world (Wikipedia in particular) hit Britannica square between the eyes with free content, and free access to their user supplied/edited content … which makes expensive book-based encyclopedias a tough sale. Not too surprisingly, the previous holder of “the authority” title in research information has done some scrambling. Britannica announced this past week they are allowing publishers to subscribe for free access to articles. Here’s a snippet from their blog;
… We’ve been swamped with requests for free subscriptions, and we’re processing them as quickly as we can. We do look at each one, so the screening process is not entirely programmatic, but no one should have to wait more than about 24 hours between applying for a free sub at our registration page and receiving an answer from us.
The majority of the people who have applied so far, by the way, have qualified and are receiving subscriptions.
If you have any problems with or questions about your subscription or the registration process, please send us an e-mail about it. (Update: Please also write to us if you’ve applied for a subscription and haven’t heard back from us in 36 hours or longer.)
Not only to they tell you up front that you have to fill out forms (yuk), and possibly not get accepted (sheesh), but they go on to let you know that there may be problems with the registration process and to contact them if they haven’t responded in a day or two (HOLY COW). Is it still 1995, and I just missed it?
Thank you, but I think I’ll just pass for now and continue to use Wikipedia.
Tell me what YOU think! Are you a fan of Wikipedia? … or, in your estimation, does Britannica have a chance to survive?
