My First Knol Article

Recently, I was in San Francisco attending the Inbound Marketing Summit event. The day after IMS I had a think tank lunch meet up with three outstanding bay area marketing minds: Murry Shohat, Gary Katz and Jerry Hart.  We discussed my book, Marketing Operations and new media paradigms.

Murry, who is a long time friend and mentor, told us about a meeting he recently attended at the Googleplex with the Knol team. You see, Murry is quite the Knol master. When you Google the word Knol, Murry Shohat’s LinkedIn profile is one of the search results in WebMynd.  Murry Shohat has quickly earned a top rating as an author in Knol.

Knol is a new project from Google. In August it will have been live for one year. Google calls Knol a unit of knowledge.

Knol is considered by some to be Google’s answer to Wikipedia. There are some similarities for sure. And, there are differences.

Knol allows anyone to author an article. You only need a Google account to be Knol author.  When you write an article in Knol it is intended to be informative, not advertising.  Knol has a social feel to it.  The tagline on the Knol home page is “share what you know and write a Knol.”  When you author a Knol article, the default is a Creative Commons license. If you want to protect your article, you can copyright your article by selecting “all rights reserved.”

Wikipedia has an entry which describes Knol accurately.  One big difference between Knol and Wikipedia is that you  don’t know the author of Wikipedia articles. Whereas a Google Knol article displays the author’s name including a photo and link to his or her profile. According to Jimmy Wales, CEO of Wikipedia, Knol is not a direct competitor because Wikipedia views itself as a community and they are a non-profit. Google gives the author the option of displaying  Adwords links in a Knol article and shares revenue with the author.

Other social attributes of Knol include the ability to share and rate each article.  The author of a Knol article uses a familiar WYSIG content management system (CMS) where you can insert links, pictures, and edit the text as you want.

Knol is still new and I’m still learning it. My early impressions are positive.  First, it doesn’t surprise me that Google has innovated something that is part social networking and part Wikipedia. Knol is another platform to go to search and find content on topics of interest. If you have something to contribute, do it. That’s what Knol is about.

After I published my first Knol article I learned that Knol uses a global “no follow” setting to disallow link authority (Google juice). Too bad, but I’m not surprised. But, there is hope. Google explains their intent to selectively “follow” some “trusted” authors. Their method is not clear. We’ll have to watch this to see how it unfolds over time.

Let’s keep an eye on Knol. I think it’s going to gain awareness and prominence in social content and valid link flow content. But, I’m sure Google will keep a close eye out for abusers. There is already a built-in function to report abusers.

Check out my first Knol article on Twitter and give it a rating, or comment or share it. Just check it out and start learning about Knol.

And, check out Murry Shohat on Knol and on Twitter, and get to know his expertise in using Knol in marketing communications.

Bernie Borges
@berniebay

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