Google Sidewiki
Google launched Google Sidewiki, a tool to comment and annotate web sites and web content anywhere; http://j.mp/1l3WeP
Google launched Google Sidewiki, a tool to comment and annotate web sites and web content anywhere; http://j.mp/1l3WeP
Gerrit Eicker 17:01 on 23. September 2009 Permalink |
Google: “Google Sidewiki … allows you to contribute helpful information next to any webpage. Google Sidewiki appears as a browser sidebar, where you can read and write entries along the side of the page. … In developing Sidewiki, we wanted to make sure that you’ll see the most relevant entries first. We worked hard from the beginning to figure out which ones should appear on top and how to best order them. So instead of displaying the most recent entries first, we rank Sidewiki entries using an algorithm that promotes the most useful, high-quality entries. It takes into account feedback from you and other users, previous entries made by the same author and many other signals we developed. If you’re curious, you can read more on our Google Research Blog about the infrastructure we use for ranking all entries in real-time. … We’re releasing Google Sidewiki as a feature of Google Toolbar (for Firefox and Internet Explorer) and we’re working on making it available in Google Chrome and elsewhere too. We also have the first version of our API available today to let anyone work freely with the content that’s created in Sidewiki.”
TC: “Google says Sidewiki is absolutely separate from last year’s SearchWiki, and comments/votes won’t be aggregated. – Besides the sites I listed above, TechCrunch50 startup DotSpots, which launched publicly last week, is very similar to Sidewiki. Its no surpise, then, that Google VP Marissa Mayer liked Dotspots so much when it first demo’d in 2008: ‘It’s a really beautiful idea and I really like anything that pushes the web forward in that way.'”
SEL: “Sidewiki feels like another swing at something Google seems to desperately desires – a community of experts offering high quality comments. Google says that’s something that its cofounders Larry Page and Sergey Brin wanted more than a system for ranking web pages. They really wanted a system to annotate pages across the web. – Of course, there’s a way this already happens, through existing commenting system that many sites have. Google may produce unease in some quarters by pushing its own would-be universal commenting system (through an API, anyone can have Sidewiki comments be embedded into their actual pages). Others tired of moderation and spam fighting may feel relieve that Google might provide more relevant comments.”
NYT: “The idea of a service to annotate Web sites has been around for a decade. Back in the Web 1.0 days, a start-up called Third Voice allowed people to post unmoderated comments on sites. After receiving some initial buzz in 1999, the company changed its model a year later and eventually shut down its service altogether in 2001. Some Web site operators complained that the comments were nothing more than Web graffiti. – Of course, Google’s Sidewiki will have an advantage over its predecessors: wide distribution. The company’s toolbar is used by millions of people.“
Gerrit Eicker 20:47 on 23. September 2009 Permalink |
Jarvis: “I see danger. – Google is trying to take interactivity away from the source and centralize it. This isn’t like Disqus, which enables me to add comment functionality on my blog. It takes comments away from my blog and puts them on Google. That sets up Google in channel conflict vs me. It robs my site of much of its value (if the real conversation about WWGD? had occurred on Google instead of at Buzzmachine, how does that help me?). On a practical level, only people who use the Google Toolbar will see the comments left using it and so it bifurcates the conversation and puts some of it behind a hedge. Ethically, this is like other services that tried to frame a source’s content or that tried to add advertising to a site via a browser (see the evil Gator, which lost its fight vs publishers).”
RWW: “The sorting algorithm and Sidewiki’s ability to display notes about the same topic on various sites make Sidewiki somewhat unique. … For some popular sites that haven’t been annotated yet, Google will also pop up a notification that comments exist, but the sidebar will actually be filled with related blog posts, which is another feature that makes Google stand out from the competition in this field.”
VB: “It’s too soon to tell if Sidewiki will be a hit, but it’s a safe bet that the usual bloggerati will jostle for position among the Sidewiki entries for Google’s homepage. Let’s take a look … hmm … Michael Gray … Danny Sullivan … Michael Arrington … I’m guessing Scoble hasn’t checked Techmeme yet this morning.”
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