Knol Beta Version: Publicly Launched by Google
Another useful tool had just been publicly launched yesterday, 23 July 2008, by Google, which they called Knol, on its beta version. The word knol stands for “a unit of knowledge.” It shows promising purposes and functions, which is to encourage people who know a particular subject write an authoritative article about it.
What do we mean by authoritative articles? It means authored are being highlighted with respect to their written articles. They said that books have authors’ names right on the cover, news articles have bylines, scientific articles always have authors — but somehow the web evolved without a strong standard to keep authors names enough credit. They consider that having knowledge who wrote what will significantly help users make better use of web content. At the core, a knol is just a web page; they use the word “knol” as the name of the project and as an instance of an article interchangeably.
Knol is a well-organized, nicely presented, and has a distinct look and feel, but it is still just a web page like blogger. But what’s the difference between Knol and Blogger? According to the Official Google Blog, one important difference between Knol and Blogger is that Knol encourages you to reveal your true identity. Knols are meant to be authoritative articles, and, therefore, they have a strong focus on authors and their credentials. We feel that this focus will help ensure that authors get credit for their work, make the content more credible. However, like blogger, Knol has simple web authoring tools that make it easy to collaborate, co-author, and publish. It has community features as well: The readers will be able to add comments and rate your article, and, if you want, they’ll be able to suggest edits that you can then either accept or reject. And, just like in Blogger, one can also choose to include ads from AdSense in the knols to perhaps make a little penny.
Knol opts to cover all topics, from scientific concepts, to medical information, from geographical and historical, to entertainment, from product information, to how-to-fix-it instructions. Moreover, Google will not serve as an editor in any way, and will not bless any content written by the author. All editorial job and control will rest with the authors. The best thing about knoll is that anyone will be free to write. They look forward that knols will include the opinions and points of view of the authors who will put their reputation on the line. They explained that there will likely be competing knols on the same subject for many topics. They shared the thought that competition of ideas is a good thing.
Just like blogger, knol is a promising site. Those who wanted to be a contributor of knowledge you can create your own knol at this address http://knol.google.com.
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So at last its out. Have been reading about it for so long, but like GMail it was always in beta. Will definitely sign up and check it out. Thanks for giving the update.