[WikiEN-l] Knol goes from a Wikipedia rival to a Craigslist imitator

G'day folks, http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/08/11/poor-google-knol-has-gone-from-a-wikip… We’ve known for a while that Google’s Knol <http://knol.google.com/> is no Wikipedia killer<http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/01/25/why-google-knol-is-no-wikipe…a/>, but now the knowledge-sharing site is being reduced to a sad Craigslist wannabe. The original idea<http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/07/23/googles-knol-the-monetizable-w… behind Knol was that people could collaboratively write definitive articles about any topic they like and get rewarded by earning a share of the AdSense revenues for each page they author. Well, that model doesn’t work so well if nobody bothers to read the articles on Knol no matter how much search karma Google gives them. Quantcast estimates<http://www.quantcast.com/knol.google.com> that only 174,000 people visited the site in the past month. So what do you do if your Knol page isn’t throwing up enough AdSense pennies to make it worth your while? You try to sell a pair of stereo speakers directly to the few lost souls who somehow end up at Knol. Will Johnson, a self-described “professional genealogist and biographer,” decided to share his Knol-edge of a pair of “Bose 2.2 direct reflecting bookshelf speakers for sale”<http://knol.google.com/k/will-johnson/bose-22-direct-reflecting-bo… own (only $70). In fact, he started his own Knol Marketplace<http://knol.google.com/k/will-johnson/my-knol-marketplace/4h… and bookstore<http://knol.google.com/k/will-johnson/wjhonsons-bookstore/4hmq… . More in story. Regards *Keith*