Google Knol : The next Wikipedia ?

Hello Humanoids . Yesterday ,  i  went to my bookmarks list and i found Knol  ! Wondering what Knol is ?  Knol is the latest Google initiative to be the best source of information .

The best place or source to know about the exact idea behind Knol is Googleblog itself :

• The web contains vast amounts of information, but not everything worth knowing is on the web. An enormous amount of informationresides in people's heads: millions of people know useful things and billions more could benefit from that knowledge. Knol will encourage these people to contribute their knowledge online and make it accessible to everyone.
• 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.

• With Knol, we are introducing a new method for authors to work together that we call "moderated collaboration." With this feature, any reader can make suggested edits to a knol which the author may then choose to accept, reject, or modify before these contributions become visible to the public. This allows authors to accept suggestions from everyone in the world while remaining in control of their content. After all, their name is associated with it!

• Knols include strong community tools which allow for many modes of interaction between readers and authors. People can submit comments, rate, or write a review of a knol. At the discretion of the author, a knol may include ads from our AdSense program. If an author chooses to include ads, Google will provide the author with a revenue share from the proceeds of those ad placements.

 Before Moving on , all of us need to know what Knol exactly is ,  Wikipedia Comes to the rescue :)

• Knol pages are "meant to be the first thing someone who searches for this topic for the first time will want to read", according to Manber.The term knol, which Google defines as a "unit of knowledge", refers to both the project and an article in the project. Several experts see Knol as Google's attempt to compete with Wikipedia, while others point out the differences between the projects.

 Here is how Knol describes itself :

Knol offers:

• Ease of use
  All you need is an account, a name and a desire to write and we'll take care of the rest.
• Control
  You specify the level of collaboration you want with the community. Your knol, your voice.
• Community
  You can connect with other experts in your area of interest to share and grow knowledge.
• Visibility
  We value and promote authorship. Great content will be visible on any search engine.
• Growth
  Sharing your knowledge with the world is rewarding for everyone.

Even if you have a little query all you need to do is to Check out this page : http://knol.google.com/k/knol/knol/Help and you will hopefully get the best replies to your answers :)

As soon as i open the Knol website all i see are :  The site logo ,  the Featured Knol by featured authors and the Plain old bag o' knols  which wants you to Use Ctrl + F (  Thank God you have Firefox  , Ctrl + F is a mess in Internet explorer ! )

Basically , its been a public Beta since 23,July 2008  which is just three days back and the best part is that there are several articles which haven't been on Knol yet and you can write your own article which means you can have reviewers for your article and if you get great reviews your Knol will be featured on the Front Page !

To publish a Knol , do just three things :

• Go to http://knol.googlle.com and Click on Write a Knol ( Login  with your Google account )

• The moment you click it , you will see a  BloggerinDraft style  ( Blogger ) Post editor where you can write Title , subtitle , affliation , alternative title and lots more . The best Part is that you can even write a summary so that people can know what's in store for them . 

• And when you are done ,  Just publish your Knol and wait for some pleasant reviews !

I totally feel this is a risky move by Google ,  i dont think anyone can move or remove the throne from Wikipedia , Wiki  has a great history behind it while Knol has just arrived . We all have high hopes from every Google Product but this services has to be well organised otherwise there is no use of this site . We expect people to write original and creative articles which aren't on Wikipedia ( which is kinda impossible ) but still there is always something new and unique we can expect from Google .


Take Care,