The fine folks at Google have released a new project that they call “Knol“:

The key idea behind the knol project is to highlight authors. Books have authors’ names right on the cover, news articles have bylines, scientific articles always have authors — but somehow the web evolved without a strong standard to keep authors names highlighted. We believe that knowing who wrote what will significantly help users make better use of web content. At the heart, a knol is just a web page; we use the word “knol” as the name of the project and as an instance of an article interchangeably. It is well-organized, nicely presented, and has a distinct look and feel, but it is still just a web page. Google will provide easy-to-use tools for writing, editing, and so on, and it will provide free hosting of the content. Writers only need to write; we’ll do the rest.

The post at the Google blog carries a few loaded phrases like this one:

A knol on a particular topic is meant to be the first thing someone who searches for this topic for the first time will want to read.

Does that mean that a Knol on a given topic will become the number one search result when someone “Googles” it? If that is the case it will be a mad scramble to create Knols on every topic imaginable where somebody already has the number one position. I am proud to say that my own meager efforts on this blog have resulted in a number one search position that brings 10-15% of my traffic every day.

But, you ask, “What is a Knol?” Good question. A Knol seems to be “the mutant love child of Wikipedia and Seth Godin’s Squidoo. I’d explain more about how it works, but honestly, that just about covers it.” (thanks Sonia!)
Squidoo is a really cool place where you can find information on an amazing variety of subjects. These lenses are compiled by some very dedicated (some might say obsessed) folks who have a great deal of knowledge and passion for their subject. You can learn about laptop bags and Getting Things Done; you can read about people, whether they are famous like Britney Spears or someone less notorious.

Developed in part by Seth Godin, the Squidoo system is best explained in his e-book Everyone is an Expert. Back in November Seth gave a talk at Google and then, well:

Anyway, I got back from my trip to Google and crunched some numbers and posted this good news about Squidoo. We’ve hit profitability, grown to be three to five times as big as others in our space and reached more than 125,000 users. A good day.

The very next day, Google announced Knol, a direct lift from Squidoo circa 2005. Apparently, Google wants to be in our business. It’s almost enough to ruin your day.

Then, a funny thing happened: I started getting notes of congratulations. Of all the business models and all the internet ideas to jump on, Google had chosen ours. There were hundreds of neat ideas out there, but they picked ours.

It is said that imitation is the most sincere form of flattery. Or is it intimidation? Google says “The goal is for knols to cover all topics, from scientific concepts, to medical information, from geographical and historical, to entertainment, from product information, to how-to-fix-it instructions.” And of course, to have a firm grip on how these pages get ranked in search results.

Personally, I am not sure how much people will like the idea of web pages that anyone can edit. It’s one thing for wikipedia, which is supposed to be an information resource, it’s quite another for your homepage. Inevitably these pages are going to get punked, as people go in and add links to their own blogs and websites. Or simply vandalized, the way that Wikipedia is nearly every day (check out these edits compiled by Wired).
Over at TechCrunch there is a lively disussion, featuring a great deal of cynicism mixed with trepidation about what is coming next, in the Comments to this post.

I am curious

• Do any of you currently use or create lenses at Squidoo?
• Would you make a Knol if it had preferential search result treatment?
• Will you make a Knol anyway, as part of your own marketing program?
• What do you think will happen if disgruntled customers make Knols for companies before the companies get to it?

Watching this play out ought to be very entertaining. I am looking forward to finding out what happens!