The Web Difference

nbsp;Ask.com has implemented many new features that they hope will increase its position in the search engine space. These include automatically including things like images, event listings, news results, and interestingly an encyclopedia entry, that relate(s) to your search term. Today was the first time I noticed the encyclopedia feature and thinking it was neat, clicked on it. I honestly expected to be taken to the Britannica site. To my surprise, when I clicked on the link I was directed to the wikipedia page for my search term.

After the initial surprise passed the first question that came to my mind was: Why did I expect to be taken to the Britannica page? Am I a digital-natives impostor? I struggled with this guilty feeling for awhile before I began writing this post. Maybe, I thought, I still (somewhere in the back of my mind) think that a “real” encyclopedia is something published by someone other than me, or you, or anyone I know for that matter. Maybe I thought wikipedia lacked “real” credibility. But this wouldn’t do, I didn’t want to think that I was a traitor to my digital-native brothers and sisters. I had think of another rationalization for my thoughts.

The only thing I could come up with is this: It might be that wikipedia entries are so unique that people tend to refer to them as just that: wikipedia entries, not encyclopedia entries. Maybe Wikipedia has gained that coveted market position that only companies (product lines) like, Xerox, Kleenex, Q-tip, and most recently Google have attained. That is, the only (or most frequent) way that society refers to the good your company provides is by referring to it as a “your company name,” or even turning your company name into a verb. It is a “Kleenex” and you can “google” something. It is not a stick with cotton on the by Q-tip and it is not a search powered by Google (for the most part). Now it is a “wiki-entry,” not an encyclopedia entry on wikipedia.

Has wikipedia attained this level of marketing, or am I merely rationalizing my treason?

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