Today Google has launched Knol, its Wikipedia alternative that holds authors accountable for the articles they write. Each article is created by a team of authors who receive attribution, and are allowed to take part in a rev-share for AdSense ads on their page. Other users can submit changes, but they have to be approved by the article’s original authors before they go live on the site (it’s basically a moderated Wikipedia).
Google says that it will allow multiple people to create Knols on the same subject. Knol allows users to rate and review Knols, and will likely include ranking as part of search results so we don’t have to sift through countless articles on the same topics. You can see an example article (a Knol that tells you how to write Knols) here.
The big news here is that by assigning ownership and allowing authors to include AdSense ads on their articles, Google is effectively offering a monetary incentive to create good content. In theory, the best articles will get the most attention, and in turn the most revenue.
Unfortunately, this plan may backfire on Google. We’re going to start seeing a flurry of articles on the most popular content – expect to see dozens of biographies on Barack Obama and John McCain in the next few days. For these popular subjects the system should work well – a few lucky (and hopefully credible) articles will rise to the top, and the rest will fade away. But for less popular topics there won’t be any incentive for anyone to write anything.
Wikipedia works well because it’s almost like a charitable organization. Everyone contributes what they can in the hopes of furthering the world’s knowledge. Knol’s community will likely be far more concerned with earning money than the general welfare, which may hurt both its credibility and the amount of participation it sees from the community.
and then they can make sure the content ranks 1st for all search queries…wait they would never do that…
No…that would be evil.
No, that would be unprofitable in the long term.
I’m glad not everyone gets it, but it does allow for lots of *noise* out there.
Interesting concept here. The monetization incentive will definitely bring content and people to the site. Does Yahoo have a wikipedia-like site in the works…. http://www.goth...te.blogspot.com
Content, yes. But what kind of content? Contributing content because you’re paid is very different than contributing content because you love it, because you’re investing in the topic, because you want to share your knowledge, want others to appreciate it.
so does this mean I can cut & paste wikipedia and get paid for it?
Wikipedia doesn’t prohibit verbatim copying, but I don’t think you’re allowed to claim authorship of someone else’s content. More at http://thenoisy...-wikipedia.html
Squidoo does something similar to Google knol if you think about it, in fact Google knol is allot more like Squidoo than Wikipedia.
Squidoo is a glorified link farm. From my perusing Knol seems to be very light on outbound links.
jason…
your thesis is that the most common/popular pages/articles are going to have the best shot at making $$$, while the less popular will languish…
umm.. what happened to the long tail being good.. and how the long tail would allow for all kinds of things to be exposed to the user.. doesn’t the same logic apply here…
oh, wait.. that’s right, who really gives a f*k about the long tail… the majority of the the revs do actually flow to the the top guys…!!!
this is really just another example of the fact that the shiniest thing, is probably going to get the most attention/revs…
what else is new….
peace
Well this will be a good way for experts to earn some money from writing! I can only dream to be in that group. ;(
Well this will be another great way to earn more revenue from content.
Goodbye Squidoo!!
Is it just me, or is the design for Knol really really bad?
I like it. Nice and clean (of course). What’s so bad? Navigation confusing? Color scheme? I’d love to read the critique.
make it work with Opera browser for a start!!!
I think the design is OK.
I differ with you about the notion that popular search terms will become the popular Knols to write. I think the ones that people clamor to write will be the ones with the highest CPC.
http://www.sco....know-knols.html
It definitely doesn’t have the finish characteristic of google products. And that’s surprising. Try browsing thru knols (”browse” at the bottom-left of the main page) – what is that? The whole thing feels like a sparse proof of concept.
Also, shouldn’t they group articles into a bunch of categories? …or just focus on search (I know you can search, but it doesn’t look like they see that as part of the users’ navigation path with the shy form in the upper right side of the page).
It seems like they don’t see knol.google.com as a starting point for people looking for information on a given subject so I wonder if all they’re after is plugging the articles into google search results and getting a slice of the pie that’s “wasted” on wikipedia (no ads, especially no google ads).
Weird.
Knol has a search box, but it don’t do much ….
On the other hand, google ranking seems amazing for Knol whatever-they’re-called’s
See my post discussing just that, at http://debizblo...ch-do-you-knol/
this is really just another example of the fact that the shiniest thing, is probably going to get the most attention
So while the debate regarding editing a regular moderated wikipedia page would be about logic, reason and fact checks, any knol “page” is only edited according to that knol’s author whim.
And authors have no clear disincentive or tabu when obfuscating, stating rumors, propaganda, and so on. Because it’s all just a popularity vote in the end.
But then some wikipedia moderators totally disregard logic, reason and fact checks if it doesn’t fit in with their beliefs.
but how many,really? how many among the top, let’s say, 500 biographies or top 1000 scientific subjects display apparent moderator bias?
compare that to the possibilities of Knols. there will now be two popular barack obama biographies – one for democrats and one from the right wing “cognitive dissonance” people. one description of the well substantiated theory of natural selection from a scientific point of view and one from a christian unscientific point of view.
so the old right wing strategy of the wedge – that there are two combating theories, and nobody can say that either is more true than the other – will have a field day,
and my nightmare is that Knols will be a tool for propagandaists and demagogs to subvert the internet back from providing all this helpful information free for all to discover, into concentrating knowledge to with those in power or with university degrees in well off countries.
reason, fact and science might need to stand back for the relativity of “truths”.
It’s not just a popularity contest with Knol. One of the points of using it is that you can expose yourself to a variety of viewpoints from different authors, not just one that the most active editor likes, like it is with Wikipedia.
The one area that they will have advantage is on topics that are controversial – e.g climate change, Israel/Palestine, ID – on these areas wikipedia has lost the plot with certain moderators censoring opposing issues. Hopefully knol will allow people to publish opposing views on certain topics and allow the individual to make up their own mind (or just reaffirm their existing prejudices!).
What about reprinting?
If only Jason Calacanis was still blogging so he could tell us how this reaffirms how brilliant Mahalo is
Lots of medical content, by doctors. Not good for Medpedia.
Also, there can be multiple Knols for a given topic. It is in G’s best interest to give readers the articles that have been found most useful or none will return.
The best content wins be it:
Knol #1 on topic X vs. Knol #2 on topic X vs. Knol #N on topic X vs. wikipedia on topic X
I bet they used the Google Search logs to determine whats the best content to put out.. and hired a bunch of docs to write for them.. Pretty neat!
Hey Google, you can’t have everything. Don’t try and eff up a great service like wikipedia. Go after Micorsoft, Oracle, Apple et al why doncha?
Knolipedia – A wikipedia for profit!
Usage: d000d why are you wasting time creating stuff for free on wikipedia.. I just made a shit load of money on Knolipedia. I m off to vegas.. u stay in ur mothers basement..
I don’t understand why everybody is comparing Knol with Wikipedia where as it is more like Squidoo and Hubpages.
YEs. Even About.com is closer than Wikipedia.
I work for HubPages, which has been offering optimized traffic and monetization for user-generated articles for almost 2 years (we launched in August 2006). We can certainly understand Google’s interest in getting involved – there is a very long tail of niche topics that are better served by individuals with topical expertise, that might not “make the cut” as notable enough for Wikipedia.
We’ve found that basic text and image editing features and AdSense work for plenty of our users, but many others have enjoyed using other embeddable capsules, like video, news and RSS feeds, and other monetization options (like eBay, Amazon and Kontera).
At any rate, it’s great to see the space validated by the big guy’s entry.
Kincaid’s parting words remind me of Prof. Oishi from Psych 101 all the way:
“If you want an acquaintance to like you, ask them to do you a favor, rather than offering to pay them. If they do it for free, they’ll be more attached to you. And, because they did something nice, they feel good about helping you out, and associate those positive feelings with their relationship with you.”
I think knol is a cool concept. Wikipedia could use some moderators.
Also, I don’t believe that people will *only* post on popular topics. Tons of people post on topics on Wikipedia that aren’t super-popular.
People do what they love and help to promote things they care about all the time, not just because of money. While it would totally suck to see someone else making a ton of money off a post while you don’t make as much, I don’t think that’s the end-all, be-all for potential knol authors.
So far, they have interesting content which is helpful for further general knowledge. Will that continue? Let’s hope.
I checked knol and went through couple of articles. Pretty lame content so far IMO. Check out the SaS page there. It was really disappointing.
If anyone is interested in purchasing http://www.oondi.com which is a website similar to Google Knol, send an e-mail to info [AT] oondi [DOT] com. The time is now for these types of websites; the business model has just been validated. oondi.com also focuses towards other languages such as Dutch and French, which is unique in comparison to Squidoo, HubPages, Google Knol, etc…
1. Write a crap SEO website that no one ever sees
2. Get acquired
3. PROFIT!!!
Unit of knowledge?…Eh? Yeah right. I guess this is end product of what you get from super good good engineers at Google.
I guess the next thing will be to create their own language for everyday use..They want us all globally to be conversing in Glanguage, and there will be a way to monetize it..
Oh the pretension.
It’s a great idea, but the user interface isn’t very engaging. It’s success hinges completely on how prominently the knol articles appear in search results. I’m assuming that there will be the top 3 most relevent knol articles before general web results, the same way sponsored links and current news currently appear at the top of the page.
One of the great questions regarding Knol is: how much is the revenue share from clicks at Knol pages? Will it be the about 70% of Adsense or will it be less?
The adsense revenue share threshold will be one of the drivers when people decide whether to commit doing pages with Knol, or for their own websites (that carry Adsense ads).
Should be a pretty decent idea IF successful. Pair it with the rumors on techcrunch on them buying DIGG and you can see how Knols + Digg could start to bubble up some decent content. Not that they need Digg for the technology.
I think the web is proliferated with “crap data” that Google is trying its best to “qualify” but we all know that even the best search tools make that very difficult.
Contrary to what you state – I think this is finally opening up the “long tail” of content creation that wikipedia started and excelled at but did not allow everyone to create content. If you believe in SEARCH, then you should believe that over time the results can be improved by applying search algos to it.
I bet they used the Google Search logs to determine whats the best content to put out
I think the web is proliferated with “crap data” that Google is trying its best to “qualify” but we all know that even the best search tools make that very difficult.
Could be a useful tool for academic peer review processes. It probably has some application for education all-round…
So Google will now own search, ads and content. They’re competing directly with their “adsense partners”. Pretty soon, they’ll own the #1 result for most searches, pushing their so-called “partners’” revenue down. I’d say this creates a real incentive to for those of us with content sites that monetize via adsense to see if another ad network can meet our needs. So much for the don’t be evil nonsense.
It is odd to see Google entering an arena where it is starting to deliver not only what the ‘internet’ has to provide by keywords, but also generating, and supervised-approving content/knowledge’ by ‘authorized’ knoledged people against the old rebels from a different school of thought, hence wikipedians.
4000 years accumulatedknowledge by man still being modifiable by those deemed to agreed upon their knowledge;
There will always be opposing two. It is seen in every field, or business; It is unbelievable how much we depend on our enemies.
It has been proven time and time again that if you try to pay users to provide content for your site that the quality and frequency of the content tends to greatly suffer. If you need a concrete example research the war between Google answers and Yahoo answers and see who won and why.
Use this as an example. Say there are 100 users who visit your site.
If you are a pay-to-contribute site – then the only users interested in contributing are those who are actively engaged in making money on the internet – meaning you get about 2 out of 100 users – with the rest of the users who make $20+ an hour in their regular jobs – do not value their time as worth it to contribute for the sake of getting paid. Quality of content also becomes a major issue
On the other hand if you allow users to freely contribute – then people will contribute just for the fame, passion and knowledge – then you get the other 98 people who each individually know alot about their subject. By not putting a $Price on their time you get alot more natural passion and knowledge coming forth.
But wait – http://www.YouBundle.com has done just that – not the content factory – but user generated authoritative Bundles of relevant links. Still in closed beta – but root simple and coming up fast.
i’m boycotting. this looks so blatantly lame.
google is the next microsoft.
yeah, i heard the pitch to some docs in SF from the Knol folks last year.
they were recruiting docs saying they could possibly earn up to 100k in adsense revenue a year for topics such as “hypertension”
yeah, the site is a glorified hub pages and squidoo…
also noticed the strategically placed nofollow tags and linking structure
do you think knol will ever get “slapped” by google, the way Squidoo was?
doubt it… which is why google crossed a very dangerous line with this.
do no evil????
They’ll need to work out a better url structure if they want to gain advanced users’ attention. Compare this:
http://knol.goo...tC006oKs/pXw2xg
With this:
http://en.wikip...iki/Lung_cancer
Or even this:
http://www.squi...m/lungcancerfaq
And it’s immediate which one most people will want to get back to. Even if Knol outperforms WP and Squidoo on the quality level of its articles (and it’s not sure a rating system combined with author accountability is the way to go), these two provide much more affordance for the user.
I think it just like an ordinary collaborative blog with no need to concern about click fraud.
The Web let you quickly access multiple sources of information about almost anything. But most users don’t review more than the first five results, and to Google’s chagrin, Wikipedia is usually among those five. This is what has given rise to the next generation of human-powered search alternatives, including my own, findingDulcinea, each of which in its own way distills the Internet through a filter of human judgment, and provides the “endorsed” results that users want, and think they are getting now from search engines. Knol will certainly have some success, but like Mahalo and Wikipedia, it will lack the consistent editorial policy, approach, voice and quality that we bring to helping users find comprehensive and credible resources to Web users. As with Wikipedia and Mahalo, some entries will be very good, and some may be dangerously bad. You get to try to figure out which ones are which.
I imagine that the web servers of the Dutch company running http://www.knol.com are receiving a lot of connections these days
In a recent interview, when asked about turning Wikipedia into a for-profit organization, Jimmy Wales said “Uh, no. We’re the Red Cross for information, I always like to say.” It’d be interesting to see if his opinion would change if Google’s system works out.
Eh, this one goes to Wikipedia, sorry Google.
Wikipedia’s been in the game much longer and more than a handful of people, both techies and nontechies know about it. Although Knol’s design and concept are real nice, Wikipedia’s are too. And Knol is still new. They’ve got nowhere near the amount of content Wikipedia does. Although Knol could quite possibly turn out to be a rough competitor in the future, I’ll be sticking with Wikipedia for a quick briefing on some uknown subject.
Another thing, although it probably is true that some of Wikipedia’s content isn’t exact since anyone can edit it, I’ve never come across anything that was completely and totally off (save maybe estimates and percentages on population sizes and such, that can’t always be exact).
Has anyone else noticed that all the articles are on health?
Knol = Ultimate MFA site
I see Google Knol as much more like Squidoo and Hubpages than wiki. Mostly, its a hybrid of them with an attempt at adding better collaboration to web hubs.
I’ve tried out Squidoo and Hubpages to write comparison articles, and I wrote my first Google Knol last night. I think it is interesting to note that it took a good week for Squidoo to get listed in Google’s search engine (even though I made sure it was posted on other popular social media sites). It took about 4 hours for my page on Hubpages to get listed. My Google Knol has been up for almost a day and it still isn’t listed in Google’s search engine.
So, thus far, I don’t see any shortcuts being taken by Google Knol. I’d expect knols to do well in google because it has google.com’s page rank to rely on, but I don’t think it will ‘cheat’. Though I am sure people will accuse it of cheating!
I do think they should have put it on a separate domain and they’d rid themselves of a lot of concerns the community at large may have with it. After all, we don’t see people talking about google as a content provider because of youtube and blogger.
Actually I dont get KNOL and the so called “concept” that should be behind this. It’s nothing else than a webpage with ONE author. Sounds familiar? Think back HTML, Geocities and the first private webpages. So we are back at the “concept” of one person writing about what she wants. That’s homepages, blogs, that’s nothing else than the web. Plus the web has a decent search engine (or several), i.e. Google. Knol = Web 1.0
Wikipedia, however is a real concept: group-created content, i.e. several people trying to improve (or change) content. Interaction, social components, integration of others. Web 2.0
Im with you Azchael, every time I check out Knol im disappointed and go back to doing research in other sources like wiki
“This Is The Opportunity To Discover How You – Or Anyone – Can Earn A Comfortable Living From Adsense… In A Paint-By-The-Numbers Fashion!”
This will be a good way for experts to earn some money from writing.
What type of traffic is Knol generating for websites?
Are they fighting with wiki or associate contents or ezine articles? I am sure Google will win.
I personally do not like the idea of Knol. I know it is another money making opportunity that google is offering. But, is it necessary? All the while we have wikipedia, the most powerful knowledge base in the internet.
I personally do not like the idea of Knol. I know it is another money making opportunity that google is offering. But, is it necessary? All the while we have wikipedia, the most powerful knowledge base in the internet