According to Newsweek, “the expert is back”. People now crave reliable information, preferably created by paid professionals. What’s more, expert-created content is Web 3.0. And exhibit no. 1 is * drumrolls * Google Knol. You know, the Wikipedia-killer that was launched last December amid great fanfare, and which still has only one (1) article/knol on offer. If you want to read up on insomnia, Google Knol is definitely the place to be. For the rest of human knowledge, Wikipedia still rules.
If Knol doesn’t satisfy you, you could always enter a search term in Mahalo, a brand new “people-powered search engine” that is “based on quality and vetted by real people” (how this model differs from your run-of-the-mill user generated content eludes me). When I search for my surname, Newt Gingrich is the top hit. Do the same in Google, and the Newth family website gets highest ranking. So much for real people, apparently…
But seriously: it’s really too bad that this is such an amateurishly researched hack piece. As a professional writer and blogger, I am occasionally paid for writing stuff that ends up on the web, and of course I hope that this will evolve into new business models. I just don’t trust former AOL executives or Andrew Keen to tell me how it will be accomplished. Keen’s statement really is a gem, even for him: “Nobody wants to advertise next to crap.” Right. Which is why Adsense is such a failure. 😉