G'day folks,
From TechCrunch
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*