AFI BLOG: Media and Technology

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NEW YORK (AdAge.com) — It has been called a competitor to Wikipedia, Jason Calacanis’ Mahalo, Seth Godin’s Squidoo and Yahoo Answers: Knol is Google’s foray into knowledge aggregation.

Knol lets users produce web pages devoted to various subject matter. Udi Manber, VP-engineering, explained on the Google blog: “There are millions of people who possess useful knowledge that they would love to share, and there are billions of people who can benefit from it.” Google will not, the company said, act as an editor.

In closed beta
The product doesn’t have many users yet. It’s in a “closed beta,” meaning only those with invites can create pages and those pages aren’t yet available publicly. But it has garnered the attention of some smart people in the blogging world.

Danny Sullivan, editor in chief of SearchEngineLand.com and an Ad Age Digital columnist, weighing in on Knol’s potential competition, finds that all of those rivals feel Knol validates their businesses and have adopted a not-to-worry attitude. Some, though might do well to worry, he points out: “I don’t know that I’d be so positive. The folks at Technorati seem to have been struggling lately. Yet two years ago, we got to read similar positive sounding statements from then CEO David Sifry on how Google Blog Search has validated his model and made it easier for partners to know what Technorati was doing.”

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