<br>In the Wikipedia world, people get compensated by having their words represent topics they want to be known for understanding or being associated with. Or they may want to be more involved in a community that permits them to edit the words of others or provide/limit access to those topics. Money or position, to date, have not been relevant.
<br><br>Google's pushing a more closed model in which people's content is paid for. This is a more Wikia-like approach. Google is cutting out the middle-man. If Google can charge less and provide access to more searchers, Google will take business from Wikia.
<br><br>I don't see Wikipedia impacted greatly by this. Google clearly wants to find ways to starve the for-profit side of the Wikimedia Foundation of revenue . This keeps Wikimedia from developing a search engine better than the present one.
<br><br>If Wikimedia, both Wikia and Wikipedia, succeeds in keeping viewers from navigating back to Google for searching, it will mean a lot of money and increased control for Wikia. Alexa ranks Wikia at 580 now. But they grew 51% in reach and over 250% in traffic in the last 3 months. Wikipedia hovers around thr 8th highest ranked site. These are daunting figures.
<br><br>Google still wants part of that growth for itself, despite the act that it is also directly fueling Google's profits: all paid ads on Wikia are from Google. Google is throwing relatively cheap R&D/operation dollars at the issue. It's good business.
<br><br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Dec 14, 2007 9:59 AM, Ricardo Vidal <<a href="mailto:rvidal@gmail.com">rvidal@gmail.com</a>> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
This could actually be a product of their acquisition of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JotSpot" target="_blank">JotSpot</a> - a structured wiki for small/medium sized businesses.<br><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div>
<div></div><div class="Wj3C7c">On Dec 14, 2007 1:46 PM, Barry Canton <
<a href="mailto:bcanton@mit.edu" target="_blank">bcanton@mit.edu</a>> wrote:<br></div></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
<div><div></div><div class="Wj3C7c">Google is testing a new project that sounds like an attempt to compete with Wikipedia.
<div><br></div><div><a href="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2007/12/encouraging-people-to-contribute.html" target="_blank">
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2007/12/encouraging-people-to-contribute.html</a></div><div><br></div><div>An interesting sentence - "<span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: Arial;">
At the discretion of the author, a knol may include ads. If an author chooses to include ads, Google will provide the author with substantial revenue share from the proceeds of those ads."</span><br clear="all"><br>
--
<br>Barry Canton<br>Endy Lab<br>Biological Engineering Division<br>Massachusetts Institute of Technology<br><br>Tel.:(617) 401-7320 (Grand Central)<br>Email1: <a href="mailto:bcanton@mit.edu" target="_blank">bcanton@mit.edu
</a><br>Email2:
<a href="mailto:bcanton@gmail.com" target="_blank">bcanton@gmail.com</a>
</div></div></div>
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http://my.biotechlife.net</a><br>skype: icky_bu
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