Devoted to online marketing, viral marketing, and web marketing

I guess it's tit for tat with Google (GOOG) and its response to Wikipedia challenging them in search, as they announced they're going to offer a new user-generated site called "knol," which will compete directly with Wikipedia as a reference work.

There will be several differences between "Knol" and Wikipedia. First, contributors will not be able to create anonymous entries and will not be allowed to edit the work of someone else.

The result will be instead of the one entry you have on Wikipedia, you could have a number of entries on any one topic, making it a competitive and potentially profitable venture. Wikipedia allows users to come in and edit someone else's entry.

Another major departure of knol from Wikipedia, is the authors of content will be able to make some money from their work and effort, by including advertising placed against their content and taking a share of the revenue generated. Authors can choose if they want to allow ads against their content

Some of the similarities retained by Google and knol, will be free access to the content, along with readers being able to adding their “comments, questions, edits, additional content.” All of that will be in addition to the original article, not adding to it or changing it; similar to a blog post.

Google has mentioned in the past that they're not going to get into the content business, but this is a way that they don't have to create their own content, but at the same time have access to and monetize others' content. Not a bad move.

This will be looked upon as a direct competitor to Wikipedia, and rightly so. But looking at the basics of it, I see it also as being very different.

When I've accessed Wikipedia, there's not much depth there, although it usually will give a good, basic foundation of the topic you're looking up. Knol on the other hand, because it's fostering competition, can be assured that it will offer far more indepth content and higher quality as well.

If things remain the same at both companies, and assuming people gravitate toward knol, Wikipedia would probably be the choice for people wanting a basic look at a topic of interest, while knol would be the place you could get more meat and a larger view of the subject.

I do disagree with Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales' response to knol, when he said, “They are not going to allow collaboration and aren’t going to go for Wikipedia’s neutral style.” The implication is it will lack balance because of that.

The major problem for me is the "neutral style" of Wikipedia is also very boring and lacks diverse ideas and opinions. What Wales calls balance, I call mediocrity, which the majority of writings on Wikipedia definitely are.

Anything that encourages competition and profit will always outperform something done for free; competition makes that a reality. It's the way of the free market.

Knol should definitely be more lively and interesting than Wikipedia, and you have the opportunity to make some money while sharing your expertise with others. Give me a capitalist model any time.