Oldak Quill wrote:
I've read that Encarta represented the first shoe to drop for EB; it could not easily adapt to that technology shift. Now, with the benefit of hindsight this does not seem as though it would have been such a big change.
The major paradigm shift lay in the enabling of two-way online communications. The passive consumer could now also become a content producer. This wasn't quite what ISP's had hoped for in an asymmetrical technology that assumed that the public would want to download far more than they would upload. Their model also presumed that they would profit from also providing the content.
I'm not sure this changes my point. If Britannica had adapted to the proliferation of personal computing and portable media by releasing a comprehensive, easy-to-use and widely advertised electronic edition before Microsoft managed to release Encarta, they may have remained on top into the 21st century. Similarly, if they had jumped on the Wiki bandwagon a little later, they may have further adapted and remained on top for several more decades.
Established companies do not change by simply drinking from a fountain of youth. Encarta took a step forward from Britannica, but when it came to understand the importance of public participation its klunky results were already stuck in an existing proprietary model. Nupedia could transform itself because it was never anything more than an experimental skeleton.
Ec