Today, we’d like to give a warm welcome to Google Knol users who are migrating to WordPress.com. Begun in 2007, the Google Knol project has provided people in many fields with a place to share their knowledge and expertise with the world using a platform designed for scholarly authoring and publishing.

Starting today, those same authors can move their articles and collaborative journals to WordPress—and they have the power to choose whether to move to a self-hosted WordPress installation powered by the freely-available, open-source Annotum themes, or to have their Annotum-powered site hosted for free here on WordPress.com. Knol will slowly shut down over the next year, and we’ve worked closely with Google, Solvitor LLC, and Crowd Favorite to make this transition as simple as possible.

We here at WordPress.com are thrilled to provide an easy, fast way for Knol authors to move to their new homes without the need for configuring their own installation. And WordPress.com users who would like to start new sites powered by the Annotum platform can activate one of the two new Annotum-enabled themes on new blogs and get started right away. It’s yet another way the WordPress platform and WordPress.com are enabling the democratization of publishing and sharing of information with the world.

For more detailed information on the Annotum Project, please visit the official site. If you’re moving to WordPress.com and have questions about the process, please see our step-by-step guide and our list of frequently asked questions.