Want an Invitation to Qassia?
January 22nd, 2008, 8 Comments »
I’ve been running this Knol blog (though, ironically, Google’s project may actually be called Unipedia) with an occasional post, and paying attention to the space. Today I encountered Qassia (link goes to my profile page, as the site is in barely-private beta), which seems to be a startup in the Squidoo, Wikia and Mahalo vein. From their FAQ:
Qassia is a site to which you can add your websites. You can also add your knowledge, in the form of tidbits of information called “intel”. The more intel you add, the better your sites will rank, the more backlinks you get, and the more money you make.
Qassia is 100 percent free, and does not require reciprocal links. You can get unlimited quality backlinks to your websites from Qassia.
Before you get too excited, it’s not real money. It’s Qassia dollars. Which, according to the FAQ again, you’ll be able to spend on “front-page advertising, site-wide links, and other novel ways for you to burn through your hard-earned Qassia dollars”. Er, wahoo.
I built a page, just to check out the editing interface. Like the rest of the site, it’s pretty unremarkable. Clearly it’s just another attempt at the user-generated content plus SEO equals profit equation. None of these sites, as far as I can figure, is a threat to Wikipedia. Google Knol (or whatever), however, may be.
In any case, if you want to check out Qassia, there’s a sign up link on my profile page. In the interests of full disclosure, I get some magical Qassia bucks if you sign up. Maybe I’ll spend them on a puppy. Oh, uh, never mind.