Aol Quietly Launches An Expert Site Called Owl, and Feeds It Seed

Aol's answer to Wikipedia is Owl , a new site described as "a living, breathing library where useful knowledge, opinions and images are posted from experts the world over." Owl seems more of a testbed for Seed than anything else. Seed, of course, is Aol's new low-cost content management system for soliciting articles and photographs for its network of existing Websites. Owl will crowdsource freelance work from "experts" who submit articles about movies, books, health, sports, money, parenting, computers, and other topics. An "expert" is anyone who gets approved through Seed. Contributers get paid a little bit and the articles tend to be more how-to advice such as " How To Survive A Long Flight" , "The Right Way To Pop a Zit, " and " Top 5 Ways To Score Free Food." It's all very search-engine friendly.