Multimedia Agency

Last July 2008, Google formally made another power-end project public after announcing it last December of 2007. The project is “knol”, yes it is another new word that technology invented and according to Google, knol is simply the “unit of knowledge”. Knol is very similar to blogging though knol is more of scholarly and professional article writing on the web. Blogging is traditionally like an online journal where you can express your sentiments and later evolved that caters to marketing and business endeavors of people while knol lets authors or writers to publish their scholarly works online

Knol: What is it all about?

Knol’s creator, Udi Mander who is also Google’s Vice President for Engineering envisions knol to “encourage people who know a particular subject to write an authoritative article”. Just is like blogging, writing a knol is for sharing and in the case of knol, you write to share your knowledge. Unlike other sites for article writing, knol wants to “highlight authors”, and have authority and ownership of their own articles. Knol is the place if you want to build your credibility as a writer online.

Knol also imposes rules and conditions to its authors. Authors are not allowed to market or publish articles that obviously advertise a product or service though business related articles that may mentions products and services are allowed.

Knol and Blog

You can start writing your knol using your goggle account, if you are familiar with blogging then; the steps are primarily the same as blogging. The basic “write and post” routine holds true in knol and readers can leave comments about your article. Knol doesn’t have a “dashboard” like in blogs; you just have to write your article on the page right away and publish it. However, knol is also comparable to writer communities online like Hubpages and Helium. Unlike blogging, readers don’t just give comments on your articles; rather, they can also rate your article. You yourself as a reader to other knols can rate other articles. This feature enables authors to build their credibility online. You can include ads like Adsense from Goggle in your knol can generate revenues, thus earning money through your articles.

Declaring war with Wikipedia

Do a search on knol and all of them will mention the similarity in terms of purpose and goals to Wikipedia though Google doesn’t confirm about this particular issue. There is an ongoing issue that Wikipedia declines to have a partnership with Google since Wikipedia is strong in its stand as a non-profit organization. Google as we all know needs ads and marketing to generate revenue and continue its operations.

So, it is very wise and clever for Google to put and build a competition against Wikipedia. But unlike Wikipedia as mentioned earlier, knol emphasizes author’s ownership in a particular article rather than mere contributor. In your own page, your photo is published with your article, thus making you feel more in control of your articles. Knol like Wikipedia aims to cover all branches of knowledge from science to entertainment and with lots of topics; Knol will soon be another online encyclopedia. But at present, most knols centers on medical topics.

To end up, Knol is another innovating product of Google and indeed another step into the Information Age that we are currently living in. Knol provides writers around the world to find another medium to express and share what they know and particularly their specific field of expertise. Likewise Knol will let authors to have a larger audience taking into consideration the millions of people using the Internet particularly the ones with Google accounts.