What will Knol do for you in the next 12 months?

[David Petherick [Digital Biographer]]

Imagine it's Christmastime, but it's 2008. Let's assume you write a knol or two in 2008, and they get good reviews and good traffic...

Aside from perhaps having a little money in the bank (or a lot, who knows) if you decide to allow Google to earn from your efforts with Adsense revenue, what do you think this will do for your reputation, your blog traffic, and for other experts in your field?

What affiliation or organisation will have the most authors writing knols out there? Will knol authors cross over from mainstream media or will it create some new stars? What will have happened to Wikipedia and about.com? What new form of marketing or network activity will advertisers be undertaking in this new landscape? What about mobile search and the use of knols? Might knols as a container for news items and reportage with those witnessing a major event using their phones / PDAs / video cameras adding to pivotal 'hubs'? Where might knols fit into social networks? What about the spammers and scammers?

Where are we going today? Please add your thoughts - we'll probably all be wrong, but wouldn't it be interesting if you were right?

[Pierre Tavlitzki]

Hi David !
I so appreciated your welcome on this site that I feel encouraged to tell my words on this discussion also.
From the beginning I considered that links inside knols and links between knols and the outside web are key issues for building a reputation. I already expressed my mood here and there on KnolStuff on related thinkings.
Once again the seminal blog post of December 13 by Udi Manber is naive. I do not know him, so I could not say "purposedly naive" but I really hope so ! He said : "Our goal is to encourage people who know a particular subject to write an authoritative article about it." The key of success is not on individual people but, as you tell us, on affiliation or organization of authors.
He also said : "For many topics, there will likely be competing knols on the same subject." This is not a key for success but for failure because the reader will be puzzled, whatever efficient the ranking robots of Google will be.
On my topics I am now considering a strategy for building a subnetwork where I could invite potential authors close to my content or even within my content. It is wide enough for many authors if I succeed. My content is limited to auction results but is covering all areas of art, furniture and collectibles. I feel that some professionals could be happy to have their site or knol linked to a free access website explaining the price of art at auction, or to be acknowledged as the authors of limited content within a more general page if their content is not worth a full knol authored by them.
AdSense banners could bring a little money to do some AdWords campaign at a later time. I think AdWords is not expensive in my field of activity.
This should look like an affiliation of authors, according to your words, and it could easily be started on a "social" network housed on Ning, I think. I can spend a few hours per week to this exciting experiment.
Stephanie : why not a similar "subnetwork" on Gardening ?
If I do it I am starting from scratch in terms of relationships, but the structure of my content is ready.
I am crazy, am I not ?

Best regards
Pierre

[David Petherick [Digital Biographer]]

Far from crazy, Pierre -a lot of very good sense there - thank you for adding that. ( I have added this content to main page status, and will write to all of the group members to draw their attention to this.)

I think an "affiliation" or "Ossociation™" (Open Association) of authors is definitely an idea that is worth exploring in details as it relates to 'knols'.

In fact, I have registered a number of domains around the term ossociation™ (and the verb form to 'ossociate™'), which I plan to use in this kind of way - as a way of having loosely associated experts and authors (as well as illustrators, photographers, editors, interactive content creators, video and audio creators) binding themsleves together by mutual agreement to provide a shared expertise and, through the process of writing, creating, editing, selecting and reviewing, creating a credible 'affiliation'.

What I plan to do is to exchange ideas to arrive at an open ossociation, and a method for it to collaborate and operate entirely online, in order to create an "affiliation" for authors whose credibility can be enhanced by being part of this body. What legal form that might take, and how that will work in practice, - well, it's a blank page at the moment, other than the intellectual property that I have created with the term 'Ossociation™' and 'Ossociate™'. (I'm placing a ™ sign alongside the words to signal my ownership, and intent to register them as trade marks).

The reason for the interest in 'Ossociations™' is that 'Affiliations' will be very important for the reader (even before they decide to read a specific 'knol'), because an affiliation like "University of X", when compared to, say, "Corporation Y", will carry more or less weight, depending on the subject matter. The example knol that Google has created about insomnia, when written by an author affiliated to a drug company who make 'natural sleep aids' will of course be different from someone affiliated to a medical faculty at a teaching and research university. In the same way, an article about a business process will have a different level of credibility written by an academic affiliate - Corporation Y will tend to have more natural authority.

The issue of peer review, rating methods and the 'wisdom of crowds' are all crucial issues that the 'knol' world has to deal with - and of course at present, other than (perhaps) within a very quiet and select beta test group created by Google, nobody knows what is proposed. I think we all know these are things that will really have to adapt and evolve in real time, but the ethos and 'ownership' of how knols are accessed and visible will be hotly debated - and Google will have to be very careful how it handles this issue. The language seems open, but the devils will, as always, be in the detail.

Knol is already Rolling at Squidoo!

Interestingly, the knol on insomnia also appears in a Squidoo Lens by Seth Godin, and coming across this just while writing this article, when I searched (through google) for Insomnia Knol, I saw that Squidoo has unveiled a SquidKnol Project which is a template for data to be entered.

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Whether Squidknol has long term traction or not, this is a smart marketing move by Squidoo!

Do take a look at the SquidKnol project, and share your thoughts here.