Britannica reaches ouf for massive collaboration

The famous Encyclopedia Britannica is definitely the biggest on-line competitor to Wikipedia, although the two projects operate on a different basis. Wikipedia is edited and expanded by massive crowds and thus covers a great deal of topics in detail but with limited reliability, whereas Britannica prefers quality to quantity, allowing only paid experts to contribute.

As Jorge Cauz, president of Encyclopedia Britannica stated on the corporate blog:

"We believe that the creation and documentation of knowledge is a collaborative
process but not a democratic one."

Although I welcome massive collaboration, I must also agree with this opinion. The dangers of Wikipedia - public myths becoming truth - won't go anywhere if we close our eyes.

But Britannica recently realized that it is impossible to manage and keep up to date the huge amounts of knowledge with only "a few" experts on board. Now it is slowly opening up, allowing registered users to suggest edits, which then have to be reviewed by paid experts before displaying on the webpage. An ideal way to increase quantity while maintaining quality? Maybe...

Don't forget, that Britannica is a pure business, while Wikipedia a non-profit organization. Most of Britannica's content is limited to users with paid premium accounts and the website is full of advertisements. The question is, what will motivate people to contribute, when they know, that their friends mostly without premium accounts won't be able to view their texts and some businessmen will make money thanks to their volunteer work?

So far, Britannica offers only one reward - your name in the list of authors below each article. I believe that this, accompanied by sense of contribution to the community, is not enough. Further restructuring of their business model will be necessary if Britannica wants to be successful. Why not to pay some money for reviewed contributions and make this business come full circle?

Government 2.0 and internet enabled massive collaboration

When I first heard of "Government 2.0", I thought it's just yet another buzzword. But now, with Barack Obama emerging as the 44th president of the United States, it might be getting closer to reality. As we all know, successful integration of social networks and other progressive internet platforms was one of the key elements of Obama's campaign. An eMarketing example par excellence, brilliantly targeting audience of mainly young and educated people.

It would be very shortsighted, not to continue walking this path. As it seems, Barack Obama is ready and introduces new ways of interacting with the government and fellow Americans, like the USA Service. When I read Don Tapscott's posts on the Wikinomics blog that inspired me to write this entry, I could not shake the feeling that what is hopefully on the doorstep is so much more than just new ways of marketing.

It's not just Barack Obama talking about "the change" nowadays. Many fundamental systems like the world economy are reaching their crisis, meaning that a new or somewhat altered order must and will be found in order to fit those systems to a globalised and through internet connected world. Governments around the world are struggling to please the nations and it is becoming obvious that their inner structure is somewhat rigid. Maybe Governmnet 2.0, reaching a higher level of interaction between governments and the people and letting the people effectively influence the decission making, is the way to go for governments.

But how about the world as a whole, is it going to be changed through internet enabled massive cooperation? Is Wikipedia only the start and an example of what many individuals united can achieve? And more importantly, how does business fit in it all? What will be the business model of companies participating in the change? Or is the old perception of business models based solely on monetary calculations simply obsolete, as huge amounts of personal time devoted to non-for-profit community projects could signal?

Many questions are waiting to be answered in the future but there is one thing that we can be sure of. If you or your company are not part of the change, not flexible enough and relying on "the old ways", there will be others who will take your place. Just as senator McCain experienced last year.