The just-launched Google Sidewiki is informative and pretty fun to play with even as it tends to disintermediate website publishers and fragments comments about their content.
Last week I wrote a Tnooz post about Sidewiki, a new Google product which enables its users to open a window alongside any website and gives them almost free reign to opine about anything on the associated pages.
In a TechCrunch post on SideWiki on September 23, Michael Arrington traces the history, dating to Third Voice in 2001, of Sidewiki-like applications and notes: “Website owners just didn’t like the idea of people ‘defacing’ their websites with comments they couldn’t control.”
Later in the post, Arrington writes: “Will this work? It’s unlikely that websites will have the same visceral reaction today that they did to Third Voice a decade ago.”
Arrington is correct that the proliferation of review websites and blogs has made website owners much more open to free-flowing, few-holds barred commentary.
So, yes, the gamut of publishers may not have the same visceral reaction that they had earlier in this decade.
However, I think Arrington seriously underestimates the push-back and tempest which I believe Sidewiki will generate.
Sidewiki just launched a few days ago and is on the radar of almost no one — except us geeks.
So, I surfed over to the Associated Press and American Airlines websites and apparently published the first Sidewiki entries alongside each domain. Using Sidewiki, I could have easily published my comments to Facebook or Twitter, too, but I held off on that for now.
The Associated Press, of course, is on the warpath against bloggers and anyone else who links to AP content without authorization.
And, American Airlines has sued screen-scrapers like FareChase [shuttered this year by Yahoo] and has probably mailed enough cease-and-desist letters to travel search engines, which were commandeering the airline’s fare data and content without permission, to fill a few loose-leaf binders.
Thus, it would appear to be an understatement to note that the Associated Press and American Airlines, to name just two companies, are a tad sensitive about other entities utilizing their intellectual property.
How are they going to feel about Google perhaps selling ads eventually in Sidewiki alongside their Web content? What will be their stance about other companies and consumers making nasty or nice comments about AA and AP Web pages when the airline and news organization have virtually no control over the dialogue?
I will bet the farm that Google Sidewiki, once publishers realize it exists and consumers and competitors start using it, will trigger a tempest and lawsuits.
And, let’s also take a quick look at some of the other complications and disruption that Sidewiki poses for website publishers.
For example, my Tnooz story last week about Sidewiki, as of this moment, has elicited 20 comments on tnooz.com.
However, unless you downloaded the Google Toolbar and added the Sidewiki button, you would have no idea that there was a whole side – shall I say Sidewiki? – conversation under way ALONGSIDE tnooz.com about the post and other Tnooz stories on the home page.
Here is one of the comments:
Canada en Español – Sep 25, 2009
eTourism
Google Sidewiki could be a sideshow for review sites
Sidewiki
Just trying out the Sidewiki now. You must have a Google account to use it, so not absolutely everyone will. However, it indeed may be useful while surfing the web and definitely may have an impact on eTourism. We’ll see.
And one from me:
Dennis Schaal – Sep 26, 2009
Journalist, Independent Contractor, Freelance Writer
Google Sidewiki
Yes, we’ll have to see the impact of Google Sidewiki, which has just been released. You know, we might need some kind of comment aggregation tool (I’m sure there are some out there already.) So, should I look for comments about the article in the comments under the article, or here, or Twitter, or Facebook? Almost a fulltime job… And so on.
And one from Darren Cronian of Travel Rants:
Darren Cronian – Sep 25, 2009
Travel Blogger, Travel Rants
Mmm
Mmm – Anyone can signup for a Google account though, it takes of two seconds, so that would not put people off from leaving negative comments about a website. Can website owners moderate it though?
So, with the beta launch of Google Sidewiki, if you are interested in gauging the full range of commentary about the contents of a website page, you’d not only have to read the comments beneath an article, but you’d have to open Sidewiki to see some additional ones.
So, as previously noted, Sidewiki tends to disintermediate Tnooz and other website publishers, whether they are news sites or steel-makers, from their own website content.
And, this ensures that website visitors will have to use a variety of tools to aggregate all the comments about a particular Web page.
Perhaps someone will build an app to feed Sidewiki comments to website publishers so they can append them to other comments about their posts.
Meanwhile, Sidewiki has the potential to become a real sideshow.
You can read my comment in Sidewicki on the Tnooz home page!
And, Joe, that is precisely the problem. I opened Sidewiki and read and responded to your comment there.
But, for the untold thousands of Tnooz readers who haven’t bothered to dabble with Sidewiki or perhaps their browsers don’t support it yet, your astute, cutting-edge comment:) about Sidewiki will remain within a Google walled garden. (And, I thought AOL was the one with the walled garden legacy.)
Unless, of course, you take advantage of Sidewiki functionality and tweet it or put it on Facebook etc.
Joe: So here’s another issue. I just opened Google Sidewiki alongside the Expedia.com home page. Someone has posted a comment and blog link about a very poor customer service issue with Expedia (I have no clue if there is any basis to it.)
But, does Expedia want this stuff alongside its home page? I doubt Expedia even knows the comment is there. But, once they find out about it………
I just wrote a post about this as well. My sense is that this is going to be another tool that is going to add stress to business people. Most (probably around 90%) of business people are struggling with social media, blogs, and comments (not to mention TripAdvisor). Now through in comments that you can only see on a specific page if you have the toolbar enabled? Man, that just confuses the issue. I’m not sold on Sidewiki yet, but in the interests of being proactive, I’m going to be watching it like a hawk.
This will open the proverbial can of worms if it does catch on. It’s nothing really new and I’ve used Diigo web-annotations and sharing for a while and tested Layers and Blerp but they obviously don’t have the recognition a Google tool has, although many of their Lab tools aren’t exactly used by a huge general audience. It’s something to watch and my guess something that will not go away.
Does anyone have any ideas on how Google would monetize Sidewiki? It wouldn’t make much sense to serve ads in such a closed environment, would it? And running ads alongside publishers’ websites without compensating the publisher? Or maybe by compensating the publisher? Maybe we are putting the cart before the proverbial horse.
If they syndicate the comments, i.e. a review site then they could run ads along side it and share revenue with the publisher. I do not believe that Google are doing this solely to improve the experience for internet users.
Dennis,
As you mention on your post, SideWiki is for geeks like us who have nothing to but giving feedback about websites. Other than this, I don’t believe a second that the Joe Blog of this world will use SideWiki to say “Hey guys, great work, love your site…and so on”. I think SideWiki will only be used by the majority of users to give negative feedback about websites because they can’t ge through the customer service of the company.
Another thing as well…I am getting really annoyed now to see Google putting their foot on almost everything. I am strong believer that common people will start to think twice by putting their eggs in the same basket. Don’t get me wrong, I love Google. But I would love them more if they could stick to what they do best “Search”.
I am sure SideWiki is one of these projects that an employee was working on (remember that Google employees dedicate 20% of their time to a personal project) but would it be really used? I doubt about it.
Guillaume
I agree it will be a total fizzer. About as successful as SearchWiki no doubt.
We tried out a very prominent Feedback “sticker” on our site in recent times. Despite getting thousands upon thousands of views, it managed to generate a grand total of 4 comments. People still preferred to get in touch through our relatively obscure “Contact” link at the bottom of our pages.
If a prominent button like that which everyone sees can’t generate any discussion, what hope does a tool like this have that is only visible to the select few who have chosen to use it?
I’m sure there will be a few people like us kicking the tyres, but that will be about all.