Forum Moderators: phranque
January 15, 2008Google recently announced Knol, a new experimental website that puts information online in a way that encourages authorial attribution
Google is betting that, if it can generate enough content, its expertise in search--and the effectiveness of peer review--will give it a competitive advantage....Google also faces the difficult task of generating a useful body of knowledge from scratch....But Google is well positioned to provide a monetary incentive for content generation through its advertising programs, such as AdSense. If Knol attracts the number of users Wikipedia currently enjoys, Google has an opportunity to publish an equivalent number of ads
Form MIT's Technology Review
[technologyreview.com...]
But how well will this model hold if Semantic Web realizes it's big step forward [webmasterworld.com] where you have agents searching for information and bringing it to you - and they will not be reading AdSense ads.
Both approaches still have big challenges and historical adoption hurdles to overcome.
Related:
Will Google Knol kill off Wikipedia (and many webmasters)? [webmasterworld.com]
1. Not only Google, but also the contributor, get paid.
2. The contributor is named.
These are so, so different from WikiCrapia (especially #2) that I find comparisons fairly meaningless.
But I also notice that if you Google [knol] you get a company deeply involved in a related industry. Strikes me that if Google are serious about the word, they'll have to buy the company. Only a third of a $bil!
Please note I'm not recommending the stock or hold any shares or have any interest at all. Honest :)
1. Not only Google, but also the contributor, get paid.2. The contributor is named.
Several academics I know tell me that these are significant motivators in academic circles, and they expect some good people to contribute articles.
