Google launches Knoll
Eating lunch today, I flicked through an old copy of Wired, and noticed a story about Google's 'Knoll' service, which is an interesting take on content creation.
It's basically a Wikipedia-like knowledge creation app, but the design focus is on identifiable individuals writing on a subject area; collaborators are also named.
Examples given have been created by Medical Doctors, Profs etc - Google are obviously trying to position this as individual expertise and opinion, vs. the collaborative, independent wisdom of groups in Wikipedia.
I'd read about it before, and reminded myself to take a further look. And just by chance, they happened to launch Knol to the public today.
There's a nice write up of the Knol team in today's Wired.
So, curious to see it in action, I created a Knol; recycling an old (2003) Academic paper I'd written.
You can access the Knol here.
A very smooth content creation experience - better than the Google Docs experience (surely it uses the same engine?) and a nice touch - embeddeble NewYorker cartoons, and simple Creative Commons rights setting.
Out of curiosity, I setup an AdSense account (I don't expect to earn a penny from that though!).
Very impressive content creation experience.
Whether this will get targeted by spam-like content creators will be interesting to see.
