Wikipedia opponent would distribute money, too

Text:

| Print

| Share:

8 commentsWednesday, July 23, 2008

Google Opens Knol For Knowledge-Sharing

Wikipedia opponent would distribute money, too

8 Comments

By Guest (WPN reader) - Tue, 02/24/2009 - 10:50

Knol nothing compared to Wikipedia

I don't think Knol will be as good as Wikipedia. Wiki has been around for a very long time and there is no way that Knol will catch up this fast with secondly: such an authoritative site such as Wikipedia.
Illegal ways to make money

By Funny_Tshirts (WPN reader) - Mon, 07/28/2008 - 12:28

It's no Wikipedia

I can't really see what it offers over Wikipedia, the idea seems to be that the sources are more credible because it is harder to add content, this might help with the problem of vandalism or people putting incorrect facts up but how does Google know the people commenting really are experts? (truthful ones as well!)

I don't think it will be as up to date as Wikipedia because it is not as open, the original author will have to make the updates to their own page, they can't be on it 24/7.

It will be interesting to see how well it ranks and if it can be as prominent as Wikipedia, judging by Grants observation it doesn't look like it!

By Grant (WPN reader) - Mon, 07/28/2008 - 04:18

There is much talk of knol

There is much talk of knol ranking well in the same way that Wikipedia does, only if you do a search for 'knol' on google.co.uk it only comes up below the finance listing for Knology, below the news results for knol, below googlegroups and ironically below the Wikipedia entry on it!

By Lill Hawkins (WPN reader) - Sun, 07/27/2008 - 09:59

knol

Am I the only one who thinks that Knol is less like Wikipedia and more like ezinearticles.com without the oversight of administrators and with adsense revenue going to the authors instead of the owners?

I looked at Knol and all the elements of the article directories are there: alternate titles (keywords), a summary for more keyword loading,an author bio and you can add a link to your site at the end apparently. And, of course, publishers can reprint them if you let them.

I've also noticed that the knols are starting to show up at the top of google searches. Odd, that, since knols have just gotten going. Wouldn't you think they'd have to have some age on them to swim to the top of all the info that's already out there?

Call me skeptical, but I think google is just adding one more strand to their stranglehold on the World Wide Web. I'm watching to see if it flies or goes the way of google pages. Remember them?

Lill

By Mayank - Google Nemesis (WPN reader) - Fri, 07/25/2008 - 01:04

Not so easy

It would be tough for Knol to replace Wikipedia. Wikipedia has become the default choice for many to search for authoritative information, this mindset would not change easily now.

Just like Google has become the default choice for all things search.

By Maddie Ruud (WPN reader) - Wed, 07/23/2008 - 16:21

Profit share / Knowledge share

I'm the Community Manager over at Hubpages.com, a free service comparable to what Google's got set up now with Knol. We, too, enable writers to cover niche topics and participate in AdSense revenue sharing on their content. One of the key differences is the way we've chosen to organize our "hubs" (or articles) by key words, to make them easy to find, as well as integrate a comprehensive scoring system that allows good, unique content to bubble to the top, and a flagging system to allow users to alert us when a page doesn't meet our Terms of Service.

It will be interesting to see how Google handles spam and inappropriate content, since that's an issue on any user-generated content site, especially one where the content is potentially open for modification by any passer-by.

We'll be watching Knol's progress with great interest.

By Paul Deeds (WPN reader) - Wed, 07/23/2008 - 16:17

HubPages

At HubPages we've been offering a very similar open publishing platform for almost two years. In that time 30,000 different authors have produced over 150,000 articles. Given our success and the success of Squidoo and others, it's no suprise that Google wants to jump into the game.

However, we think that we are ahead of the current version of Knol in several ways, 1) Discovery - we organize hubs around tags and topics, and have a complex rating system called HubScore that brings the best authors and content to the top, 2) Tools - for users that aren't familiar with HTML, our tools make it drop dead simple for them to add and position photos, videos, and products to augment their text, 3) Community - we have a large and established base of authors along with powerful community features including forums, fan activity feeds, and requests (q&a), and lastly 4) Monetization -- we give our authors the option to make significant income using AdSense, Kontera, and the Amazon and eBay affiliate programs (or they can turn ads off altogether). Knol shares revenue, but they have a single small ad that is unlikely to make author's much.

I'm sure the Knol team will be working hard to add some of these things, so we're going to have to work even harder to stay ahead of them. We welcome the competition!

Paul Deeds
HubPages General Manager