What is a Unit of Knowledge?
Recently, I introduced myself to a new tool in Google’s arsenal called Knol. They consider a “Knol” to be a “unit of knowledge”. That is kind of funny, it is almost like the site Qassia, which considers its “Intel” to be a “tidbit of information”. Tomato, Tomotto I guess. Now there may be similarities, but there are also differences. Major differences. With Qassia, you get backlinks for each and every intel you submit to their site. With Knol, you only get a backlink to your site if it is featured on the homepage of Knol, which means it won’t be a permanent backlink.
With Qassia, there is a 5 point rating system, even an option to reject intel. There is also the option to leave feedback for improvement. Knol also has a 5 point grading system, only it uses stars instead of numbers. However, Qassia also correlates each piece of intel’s score with a star based rating, based on what score the intel receives. You can also leave comments on both sites. Although on the Knol site it is more seamless and easier to accomplish. This due in part to the fact that a Knol is also very much like a Squidoo Lens. Only you don’t have to go through a bunch of steps to create a Knol, like you do with creating a Squidoo Lens. Knol is very easy to use, and it is easy to modify the format of your text on the knol. You can even add pictures, video, and audio. Pictures are easy to add, but audio and video will require knowing how to embed media. You can add Google’s Adsense to both sites through the admin Panel. On Qassia you just enter your publisher id. On knol, you just provide the email address you have affiliated with your adsense account. Knol also allows you to verify your account to prove you are who you say you are, and you can even add details about where you went to school and what degree you achieved to prove your expert worthiness. One of the really nice features on Knol is the fact that when you add headings to your knol, they are automatically converted into a mini table of contents at the top of your knol. In addition, if you use sub headings or minor headings these are converted into the sub links for the table of contents. Each link will take you directly to the portion of the knol where the heading is located. You also have the option to modify the rights of the knol. On knol you can have sort of a wikipedia type of environment that allows other users to contribute to your knol. You can set it so it will either be automatic or it is moderated where you allow only the contributions you want to allow. The other option is to have what is called, “Closed Collaboration”, where only you and who you set as authors can contribute to the knol. So you could leave it to just your contributions or you could allow a few other experts in addition to yourself to add to the knol, without leaving the knol wide open to the rest of the community. There are lots of other features to the knol, and it is really going to kill a lot of article sites. Other sites may allow backlinks, and this site may not, but in the long run due to the increased exposure you are likely to receive with it being a Google product, it could de-thrown veteran article sites like Ezine Articles. It will probably help eliminate the spam since there are no backlinks involved. Check out Google Knols at http://knol.google.com. You can check out Qassia by going to http://jjpmarketing.qassia.com. Both sites are free to join. If you already have a Google account, all you will have to do is sign in with that account to access the knol site.