Encyclopaedia Britannica Takes Steps To Attract Bloggers
In an effort to attract bloggers to link to their content, the Encyclopaedia Britannia has come out with web based initiatives - Webshare allows web publishers and bloggers link to Britannica articles, with their readers able to follow those links without an account, while Britannica Widgets allows publishers and bloggers to post an entire cluster of related Encyclopaedia Britannica articles on their blog or Web site. As their website describes it:
A special program for web publishers, including bloggers, webmasters, and anyone who writes for the Internet. You get complimentary access to the Encyclopaedia Britannica online and, if you like, an easy way to give your readers background of the topics you write about with links to complete Britannica articles.
Publishers can register here, and based on an evaluation, can also get complimentary access to Britannica.com for a year.
Given that Comscore estimates state that for every page viewed on Brittanica.com, 184 pages are viewed on Wikipedia (3.8 billion v. 21 million page views per month), it is time they did something if they plan to put any emphasis on the online front. My guess is that they would no doubt make it free (an ad-supported model), going down the line - that is pretty much the only model which seems to be taking over the Internet.