Article posted on 23.10.2011
Announcement of Knol closure was made on 22 Nov 2011
Knol was open for public posting in July 2008. Google analytics was
made available on Knol in May 2009. So Knol authors who installed
analytics in May 2009 can see the performance of their knol portfolio
and individual knols from June 2009.
As I
observe my June 2009 page views and my current page views I realize
that, there is a six fold increase in page views. The historical records
of the visitors and page views are posted in Knol Page Views and Visitors - Historical Record - K.V.S.S. Narayana Rao.
What is the forecast for the future for Knol?
30X increase in visitors and page views.
What is the basis for such an estimate?
The
S curve phenomenon applicable to new products. New products initially
take time to get the attention of early adopters to use it. Once early
adopters express their satisfaction and start informing others about the
utility of the product, the market starts growing. In the case of Knol,
except for the intial few days, in the social media, there is negative
news. The leaders of the social chose to denounce Knol as a platform
that has no place in the academic content area. Knol is an open platform
without any editorial control. Also, it was operated as a passive
content platform without any push from the platform managers to increase
content on it. Even though, adsense was allowed on the platform, there
is no real emphasis on it. Initially only one advertisement was placed
in the article. Subsequently, two ads were placed. There was no effort
to monetize the article further allowing other advertisement. Therefore,
the platform was not at all attractive professional bloggers who are
writing on various content farms for money. Knol, went for low
monetization, high page view route and there is no professional writer
who is into such strategy. Pure academicians and corporate professionals
who wrote for the purpose knowledge sharing, have no idea of promoting
online articles. They simply posted the article and left it. But online
articles are ranked by their backlinks and due to the absence of
backlinks, articles on Knol were not visible in search results. Social
media pundits reported that knols are not appearing in search results
and therefore they have no value. Despite all these factors, which acted
as negative factors, Knol had 6X improvement in 2 years.
Is there Positive Sentiment for Knol now?
Knol
presently has estimated 6.95 million unique visitors per month. The
unique visitors number is growing steadily. There are many authors who
posted 100 knols and many of them are posting new knols further. This
visitors - author combination is the strength of Knol now. Also, persons
who are making negative comments on Knol are showing their willingness
to reevaluate Knol when they are presented fact of Knol's performance.
Some started writing about the good performance of Knol in comments. So
the positive sentiment for Knol is being built at the foundation level
by visitors and authors. Knol Author Foundation recently released two
press releases and they were received well.
The positive sentiment will help Knol in increasing its performance many fold in the coming three years.
Required Online Infrastructure Now Available
Search Engine Indexing
In
the initial authors expressed their anxieties regarding indexing of
their knols. Now we know that knols are getting visitors from all search
engines. Still many knols may not have been indexed. But it is up to
the authors now to make their knols visible to search engines through
their online communications. At the basic level, many knols are indexed
on all the search engines.
Social Networks Support
Support
of social networks will come if knol authors participate on social
networks. For authors participating on Orkut, Facebook, Linkedin,
Google+, Tumblr, Chime.in, Twitter there is support for their knols and
visitors are coming from these networks.
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