Webware

On the Internet, nobody except perhaps Google Profiles knows that you're a dog.

For those who want to endow their self-description with an extra layer of authenticity--helping put doubts, for instance, over whether their Profiles page may have been created by a scuzzy ex-boyfriend to rest--Google has carried over a feature from its Knol sites that let people verify that they are who they say they are. People who go through the process--Google executive David Glazer is one--get a green "verified name" tag on their profiles.

Google executive David Glazer is among those who have verified their names via Google Profiles.

(Credit: CNET News)

The name verification procedure comes from Google's Knol site, where people can create their own Web pages to inform others about various subjects.

"Profiles will display a 'verified name' badge, if the user has verified their name through Knol. Any user can go through Knol's interface to obtain the verified badge," Google said in a statement.

Upon user request, Google verifies names by checking them against phone or credit card records. It's an experimental feature available in the United States, and there are limitations.

Here's how Google describes the process:

We believe that letting authors verify their name helps increase their credibility and trustworthiness in the eyes of their readers. You are not required to verify your name to use Knol, but if you choose to do so, you will be asked to provide some personal information, which we will use in an effort to authenticate your name.

Today, this experimental (beta) service is only available for U.S. accounts. We currently are also limited to verify names where we have available data, so if one verification method doesn't work, please try the other. Over time, we will add additional verification methods.

For verification by phone number, we will securely pass your name and phone number to a telephone directory database, and if your information matches their records, we'll give you a unique Personal Identification Number (PIN) for use in the verification process.

You'll get an automated phone call on the phone number that you gave us, asking you to key in your PIN, and that's it--you're verified. You must have a phone number in your own name to use this option. Please note that rotary phones, VoIP numbers, and extensions may not work with our PIN verification system.

For verification by credit card number, we will securely pass your verification information to a third-party credit bureau, which will confirm that your information matches a record in their database.

Your credit card will not be charged, this process will not result in an "inquiry" to your credit profile, and no one will look at any credit-rating information or specific financial information in connection with this verification. Google will not see or have access to your credit profile or other credit bureau information. Instead, the credit bureau will simply provide us with a status indicator to let us know whether or not the information matched their records.

Google Profiles pages are mostly dashboards where people can control settings for various Google properties such as Gmail and Google Maps, but the company just gave its Profiles new prominence by letting them be discoverable by search engines. Google also added a "search profiles" box at the bottom of the Profiles page that lets people confine their queries to the Profiles pages.

I'm an expert on pit bulls! Really.

I just wrote a knol, a Web article akin to an encyclopedia entry, using Google's new Knol publishing platform launched publicly on Wednesday.

With Knol, Google is encouraging people to create more authoritative content that can be indexed by its search engine and monetized with ads. Unlike blogs, which tend to be casual and opinionated in tone, knols are supposed to be fact-based, informative, and well-sourced articles on a specific subject.

The author's knol on pit bulls.

Google is dismissing the notion that Knol is its Wikipedia killer, but both operate under the premise that Web users can collectively create a knowledge base that can be searchable and vast.

The difference is that while anyone can edit a Wikipedia entry, which can lead to pages and pages of edits and contradictory revisions and accusations of bias, knols have an author's name attached. A knol author is responsible for the content and can choose to allow others to edit it, or filter suggested edits or even block public editing entirely.

I decided to try Knol out. First I had to figure out a subject I felt I knew enough about. I walk dogs as a volunteer at the local animal shelter where there happen to be a lot of pit bulls. I've learned a lot about the dogs and have become disturbed by the amount of misinformation that circulates about them. So I did some research and wrote a knol titled "The pitfalls of stereotyping pit bulls."

The hardest part was the research. But given that I do that every day for my job, it wasn't all that tough. I wrote the item in Microsoft Word and then cut and pasted it into the Knol page. It was easy to use the editing tools and add images. However, I think the page looks rather simple and dull. The system lacks the ability to add background colors and other stylistic flourishes that give blogs that individualistic panache.

Once I published the knol using the default "moderated collaboration mode," a colleague logged into his Google account and suggested an edit to my knol. I, in turn, rejected that edit (it's irrelevant that ex-Atlanta Falcons player Michael Vick, who I mention in the knol in reference to his dog fighting charges, wasn't that great of a quarterback). The system didn't notify my colleague that I snubbed his edit; he had to go to the page and keep checking the site for himself. It would be nice if the system were to notify people of the status of their suggested edits. Later, I found out that when an edit is accepted, the person who suggested it will be listed as a contributor in the contributor's list on the page.

My colleague, Tom Krazit, suggested an edit to my knol, which I subsequently rejected.

It also took a few hours for the system to index my knol so it could be searched via the main Knol page and even then, it only initially showed up when I searched by subject (pit bulls) but not by author name. By the next morning, I could search also by author name. The knol has yet to show up on the Google search page using both subject and author.

A Google spokeswoman said it takes time for the company to index new knols, but didn't say how long.

After some digging around I figured out how to add advertisements through Google's AdSense program, but I won't see any on the page for awhile (it can take up to two weeks, the system said).

Adding a New Yorker cartoon was simple. I was directed to the online New Yorker Store where I searched for cartoons dealing with pit bulls and found one. But when I added it into the blog it automatically inserted it at the top of the text and above the other image I had chosen. It didn't look right, so I removed it. If I had had the ability to determine where on the page the cartoon should go, I would have used it closer to the bottom of the page.

This New Yorker cartoon, while it was appropriate to the subject matter, was removed when I learned I couldn't control where it appeared on the page.

(Credit: The New Yorker)

I felt an odd sense of power, and responsibility, creating my knol. It gives me the ability to publish anything I want, without having to run it past an editor like I do at CNET News. And once it is published, it is a permanent record and has an air of legitimacy that editorializing and gossipy blogs don't have. It's a Google knol--"a unit of knowledge" as the Web site describes it, lending it at least the illusion of propriety.

But what if I wanted to write something inaccurate or defamatory? Already that question has been put to the test with a knol written by Rachel Marsden, the ex-girlfriend of Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales.

Her knol is titled "Jimmy Wales (Jimbo Wales)" and the summary describes Wikipedia as an "online libel board," that "any loser can use to smear people who are more successful than them."

I asked the Google spokeswoman about this situation and her response was: "Knol will be subject to our general content policies and terms of service, and knol content will be treated under those policies like any other user-generated content for which we provide a distribution platform. In particular, we will provide community flagging tools and the usual legal notification processes, so that we can comply with applicable laws and regulations. In addition, because knols are attached to verified author names, we think that the structure of Knol will actually provide something of a disincentive to defamatory or other harmful content."

It will be interesting to see how the Marsden-Wales fracas plays out on Knol. Google's response didn't give me any confidence that the system won't be widely abused. And it's likely that people who disagree with my knol will create one of their own with contradictory conclusions.

In an interview on Wednesday, Knol Product Manager Cedric Dupont said Google won't be determining the legitimacy of knols or verifying the authority of their creators. "We are not editors in any way," he said.

"We think we make it very easy for the user to determine the trustworthiness of the content."

I've deemed myself an expert on pit bulls by writing the knol. We'll see if the reader reviews and ratings suggest otherwise.

Last night on the official Google blog, Udi Manber, vice president of engineering, announced that Google is testing a publishing platform called Knol.

It's being compared to Wikipedia and Mahalo. While it's a somewhat different take on knowledge collection, these comparisons are apt.

From what we know so far, Knol is a wiki-like platform. Authors can create topics, and there are tools to interlink articles and content, but as Manber says, an article, or "knol," is "just a Web page." Where it differs from a wiki is its focus on the author. All knols will highlight who wrote them.

Knol should make it easy to create nicely formatted reference pages.

(Credit: Google)

That small difference becomes dramatic when you put Knol alongside Wikipedia. Wikipedia is a collaborative system. There is no author listed on a wiki page because a page may have many authors (if you want to, you can divine who said what on the history pages).

Since Knol pages will be authored, users won't, presumably, be able to dive in and edit another page. They'll be able to submit edits to the author for approval, though. So much for open collaboration. But as a platform for authors who might want to make some money from their work, it's a better bet (Knol will allow authors to monetize their pages as they see fit).

Purists may think that since Google is in the business of monetizing content via advertising, it should not compete with other publishing platforms. However, this is not the first time that Google has gotten into this business.

Blogger, of course, is Google's biggest success in text-publishing platforms. But Google also experimented with its own database, Google Base, in which it not only indexes the information but also stores it. And then there's YouTube.

I would compare Knol to Blogger, and eventually, I think it will have Digg-like elements. Knol is like Blogger because it's a personal publishing platform. It's all about giving authors a platform for writing. It's just a like a blog, but much more structured. If you like a Knoller, you'll likely want to read more written by that person, or even subscribe to his work.

It could become Digg-like, in that multiple Knol pages on the same topic will compete with each other. And while the Manber's post hinted that the arbiter of Knol quality will be Google search rankings, I cannot imagine that there won't, at some point, be both a social network of Knol users and a main page that ranks the most popular Knol pages by votes, page views, discussion flow, or other group metrics.

At this point, based only on the official blog post, Knol looks like a solid end-user publishing platform. I strongly doubt that it will put much of a hurt on Wikipedia, since its author focus makes it much the antithesis of the open, community-driven wiki model. Knol looks more like a Google version of About.com, Mahalo, or Squidoo.

No word on when--or if--Knol will be released to the public.

See also: Google develops Wikipedia rival on News.com. If you're interested in this story, I recommend that you read the official Google post as well as Danny Sullivan's post on Search Engine Land.