I was logging in to my Blogger account today planning to write on something when i noticed right on my dashboard was the latest Blogger Buzz from the mighty Google. A few months ago Google announced that a new product called Knol is on testing stage. Just yesterday, July 23, 2008, Knol was officially launched.
So, what really is a Knol? As Google defines it, Knol is a unit of knowledge...an authoritative article about a specific topic.
Since it is in a form of an authoritative writing with the underlying key principle which is authorship, it will have an author or group of authors who will share their expertise on a specific topic.
A Screen shot of a Knol about Lung Cancer
As I've had a short read of some Knols available, the tone of writing is of formal sort or simply academic. One good thing about its feature is that, readers are allowed to give suggested edits and the author in return can either accept, reject or make necessary modifications to the posts before a Knol will be available for public view. This gives the author full control of their written topic which is of course associated to their names and credentials. On a readers point of view, with the available feature of rating, giving comments and review of a Knol, I find it an advantage for the readers to acquire academic information which are thoroughly screened. Another good thing also is that the author is allowed to put Adsense on a Knol as a means of monetizing it. As i did several Knol hopping, I noticed that the template used were all same. But for a formal form of writing, the design was indeed well layed-out.
With enormous amounts of information we can get from the web, some of which are not worth knowing about, Knol is indeed a good alternative for Google to cater the best of information and in taking the lead.
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