20 years ago today, I launched Knexa.com: The World’s First Knowledge Auction.
In the midst of the 1999 dotcom euphoria, I came to believe that there was something fundamentally wrong with the Internet. So I started a company with a vision to fix the Internet. It was called Knexa: Knowledge. Exchange. Auction.
I still have a hard time explaining what I perceived to be the problem with the Internet that was intriguing me, as it appeared to me like a shape, a matrix of crisscrossing lines, of complex and interdependent strings that are woven together into a knot of inefficiency and economic paradox.
The central string is the problem of price. Specifically, the price of information. Infinite in variety, quantity and quality, each piece of information on the Internet must have a price. If there is no price, there is no Internet.
Another core string is payment. Each bit of information must be paid for. Without payment, there is no Internet.
The other stings weaving through the knot are telecommunications access and rates, computer screen availability and quality, sound device availability and quality, payment systems, commercial transactions, a labyrinth of strings related to advertising markets, the threads of variable human behaviour, and, among many other strings, the role of the technology entrepreneur, who is able to pull some or all of the strings.
Knexa, among other things, was at its core a pricing algorithm whereby the price of information accessed through Knexa.com would rise and fall based on demand and other parameters. A core principal of Knexa was that the “knowledge assets” that were the object of trade through the ecommerce platform (which could consist of any kind of “content“) could be evaluated by users through eBay-style ratings. Aside from pricing content, Knexa was an expertise location and validation system.
Less than a year following its launch in August, 1999, based on the power of the idea of placing a market-price on a piece of Internet content, Knexa had investors and partners all over the world. Knowledge Management experts like McMaster’s Dr. Nick Bontis joined Knexa, as did Sweden’s technology visionary and author Leif Edvinsson, and IBM knowledge guru David Snowden also got involved. Australia’s 7 Television Network invested and partnered, and Intellectual Capital pioneers in Scandinavia and globally hailed Knexa as a major breakthrough in validating the theory that the economic value of knowledge could be determined by market systems using monetary currency.
Also within a year, dozens of other “eBay’s for Knowledge” came into being. One Silicon valley startup called Keen.com was backed by eBay founder Jeff Skoll. They raised US$100 million to launch it, dwarfing Knexa’s CDN$2-3 million. Later, Google launched Google Answers, a pay-per-play, written expertise site. Google also had a service called Google Knoll.
Like Knexa, all the other players were facing the same problem, i.e., the challenge of creating a monumental document management system capable of storing, categorizing, describing and retrieving the entire sum total of the world’s knowledge. Google and other search giants have done well in helping the world find the information they want. Wikipedia is a kind of miracle, but nevertheless the truly deep knowledge of this world remains behind paywalls and costly academic subscription pricing, much like it was in 1999.
Knexa and others like Google and Skoll were chasing the same dream. The idea that a higher-order level of knowledge could be exchanged on the Internet, democratising the knowledge economy across every border. It was a noble goal. It was a vision for finally transforming the World Wide Web into a tool to achieve a quantum leap forward in human understanding. That idealistic worldview is one that technology evangelists still preach.
Knexa was one of many forerunners of the coming world of user generated content, first powered by weblogs, then by social media. Knexa, Keen and others were a form of social media, relying on the members to create and manage their own content and interact with others.
Ultimately, with the dotcom bust in full bloom, Knexa, like many visions of “disintermediated” eMarketplaces, transitioned to the enterprise software world, creating Tribute in 2003, a fully “gamified,” web-based team collaboration software system, akin to Slack. Following the sale of a later-acquired CRM business, Knexa went private and closed some years later.
But the problem Knexa was trying to solve remains relevant.
In a world of suspicion about privacy and how personal information is used, its only logical to conclude that the current, dominant pricing system for Internet information is via an informal and not always transparent data exchange. Users “sell” personal data to social media, cookie enabled websites and other entities, and receive a fantastic amount of “free” information in return. But the information is not free. The price is high in terms of the demographic details websites collect. Is this price too high? Is the price just right? Is the information of good enough quality? Has anyone truly figured it all out yet?
In 2001, I submitted my Final Project in fulfilment of the Simon Fraser University Executive MBA Program. The paper was an attempt to sort out the great knot of strings that I believe still remains an Internet enigma to this day. I evaluate the underlying economics of knowledge and information and propose a novel matrix for categorizing online content. Was it ahead of its time?
The paper sits in the SFU Library, and a copy is available via the link below.
Digital Diagnosis; Copyright Intellectual Property and the Internet
Knexa changed its logo in 2003 to reflect its focus on Knowledge Management software.
Knowledge. Shared. It’s both an ethos and a philosophy that guides my life to this day.
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