Knol? I don’t see it…
Google announced Knol the other day - their most recent foray into becoming a content provider instead of just a content pointer outer. As TechCrunch notes it seems quite a bit like Squidoo and only mildly like Wikipedia - apparently people will be able to suggest edits to all pages, but it isn’t clear exactly how this will work.
The basic idea is that anyone can post a page on a topic - whatever that topic is (Google will provide no editorial interference), whether or not it has already been covered. The creator of the page is the sole owner and they can opt to put ads on and Google will share the revenue. Other people can then comment and rate said page, but can not actually edit any of the content - or maybe they can but all at the sole discretion of the page owner. If they disagree and want to set something up, they will simply have to create a new page on the same subject. Each page is called, goofily, a knol - a brand new measurement Google invented to mean unit of knowledge. Like a mol which is a a unit of substance. Get it? Get it? That’s what you get when you only hire PhD’s.
Here’s the problems I see - Knol will have the tendency towards the fragmentation of information, where Wikipedia has the tendency towards aggregation. Each individual has the incentive not to complete the whole picture of a given topic on a single page but instead to create their own page with their own particular view of a subject - if they spend their time working with the original author increasing the value of the original page it is the author who reaps the reputational as well as the monetary benefit. So, as an expert on a subject it is much more likely that I would simply start a new page with my particular information.
So, where Wikipedia pages will tend towards having a more or less balanced view of a topic as different experts (and non-experts) wage their edit wars, Knol will simply have tons of pages each with a single view point leaving it up to the readers to read over many of them to get a full and balanced picture. As far as I can tell the central difference between Google and Squidoo is that Google believes that it has the chops to algorithmically choose the most accurate knols to surface for a given search. It may at that, but I suspect that for most knols on popular subjects there won’t be a single page that provides all the information one needs.
Knol probably has a bit more of a long tail than Wikipedia given that it’s domain is much broader than Wikipedia’s so there’ll be a lot more topics. Still, given financial incentive I suspect that this will become the playground for SEO experts who’s knols will rise to the top of knol searches as well as google searches, leaving the individual expert sadly in the dust.
Ultimately, I don’t see that as anything better than Squidoo except for a nicer design and Google’s muscle. Because of the fragmentation effect (which Google says is the competition of ideas) these pages will not achieve the prominence of their Wikipedia counterparts in search returns - I don’t really see how the information will be any more accurate on highly trafficked pages. The interbloggerweb seems to think it’s a good idea. What do you think, is this going to wipe out Wikipedia? Knock down About.com? Or just be another trip to the fail zone…
