Wednesday, July 23, 2008

Official Google Blog: Knol is open to everyone

FROM Official Google Blog: Knol is open to everyone

What is Knol?
Google’s answer to the monster that is Wikipedia is Knol, which is basically Wikipedia with more ownership and monetization. Knol, at its core, is a collection of “authoritative articles about specific topics, written by people who know about those subjects.”

Google elaborates on Knol as
“The key principle behind Knol is authorship. Every knol will have an author (or group of authors) who put their name behind their content. It’s their knol, their voice, their opinion. We expect that there will be multiple knols on the same subject, and we think that is good.”


What is different about Knol?
The primary difference that separates Knol from Wikipedia is to provide each author the ability to monetize their page through integratation of AdSense ads - this obvioulsy results in a incentive to create good, popular, content -- and get rewarded for the effort by AdSense. The monetization of pages will draw immediate attention and content creation. This is what differentiates Wiki. While on Wiki, people contribute to share knowledge without looking at $$$ they may earn, Knol would to a large extent lead to contribution only for the sake of making money. Nothing wrong to get some return for your investment, time and knowledge, but sigh... majority who browse the net know the difficulty one has to go through to identify right content without clicking at about dozen ads on the way. I just hope this doesn't become another commercial only knowledgebase with only intent to make money.


Need to know more about Knol? Do you have any question that you would like to ask or in true Wiki spirit, have a point missed out that you would like to share with readers? Feel free to comment and present your views. I would love to hear from you.

Cheers,
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