Been following the latest controversy about Google SideWiki?  Here’s a good overview of what it is and what it means.

In a single sentence: At present, it’s centralized chat (the good and the bad) about a particular URL/page that currently ONLY appears in browsers with the free 1) Google Toolbar installed AND 2) the sidewiki frame open via this icon . unless it’s integrated into the webpage via the API google provides.

The Google Sidewiki breakdown

Here is a official shot from google with what it would look like in action, say we are visiting the hypey san francisco tourist page, we are getting potentially useful social commentary on the left.

To understand the fuss let’s asks some questions:

As a viewer of this site, do you feel you are looking at one consistent whole or two parts?

Are those comments relevant or not to the page?

Is the first comment by Susan about the best time of the year to visit purely opinion or by a qualified weather forecaster, or a native who’s lived there for years (note San Fran has many different microclimates so you should be prepared for anything)

Is the second comment by  Melissa a Shill for the Golden Gate Bridge Tour  or Golden Gate Toll Bridge Operators?  Could I reply to Melissa being a member of the Citizens Promoting Walking Golden Gate? Would you as a reader of the page care to see that?

Now here’s the breakdown, the area in green is the browser, the Google toolbar and sidewiki are a part of the browser. Your page is in the orange area, the Comments in the red box are specifically about that particular URL in blue.

NOTES

I find – especially with reference material, it’s much easier to understand by annotating books helps me understand, my personal library (and some of the public) are filled with side bar notes.  Going to a used book store I find I’m not alone in Marking up books with highlighters and sidebars, and in some cases I’ve found these other sidebar notes either highly insightful (especially in physics where the problems in the book had the wrong answers), entertaining or an ugly nuisance.

The internet being largely a digital equivalent, the range of  possibilities is the same.   This social annotation of the web is not a new concept, multiple other sites have done, currently do the same or similar things.  Most have failed, but then most don’t have the backbone of google.

How SideWiki Works

Just like in a book where the doodles are tied to the page they are on, so I could say “see the doodles on page 3″ the Sidewiki currently maps social comments to the particular URL, and that URL can be passed around to fried.s

http://www.buzzmachine.com/

has Google Sidewiki “entries” about the site overall.

This page:
http://www.buzzmachine.com/2009/09/23/google-sidewiki-danger/
has another a different set of Google Sidewiki “entries” about that post/page.

But, this url doesn’t, thought it *may* be the same page as prior, it might not
http://www.buzzmachine.com//2009/09/23/google-sidewiki-danger/#comments

That last should show you how brittle this can be, and also has implications if you blog and you change your permalink structure.

3 Side Wiki Myths

1)  you don’t have control of your content: HALF TRUE  you don’t have 100% control of your content, as the site owner you have the first comment reserved just for you, and you (with others) the ability to vote or rate  comments.  There are also some ‘blockers‘ being built that exploit the URL

2) Comments are there forever: NOT TRUE,  comments can be rated and deleted. Over time those with value will survive those without value will die off. Of course by then like a smear campaign the damage might already be done.

3) Spammy comments are easy to make: HALF TRUE,  while anybody can comment those comments require a google email id, and that google id has a history and trust factor.  Any comment can be deleted or ranked. Eventually this will get orwellian sophisticated, for now it’s about as easy as tweeting.

Eventually you’ll see comment ranking just like search engine ranking   (a new field CEO? Comment Engine Optimization?).  So  Just like in web search/ SEO if a guru and a newbie both post the same comment the guru will eventually be ranked higher.

PROS

adding an active dialog about any page, making each page blog like, seems inevitable as the web is really about humans being human, and we like to talk!  That said Google is still far from ideal.

For government sites this layer of transparency could be great.

In theory for inept spammy sites having no real value, this comment board will end up being giant warning signs to warn consumers (e.g. refund issues)…if they aren’t out shouted by other spammers trying to compete for the same search traffic which seems more likely.  For companies with solid value, if you are subtle it can be a completely new channel to brand.   Hijacking sabotage or shilling are also possible.

For severe offenders google is already blocking these people on multiple levels: first with the google slap, then banning them from PPC, then black listing in the from the search engine so you don’t show up, and blacklisting with the browser so you can’t even see the page without feeling like you are about to have you machine instantly hacked.

If machines start using it as an central open place to add metadata that could also be quite amazing. As good as google is, there is still a great degree shrouded in mystery about how some of it works.

INBETWEENS

the comments are tied to your google id. Which has all sorts of metrics used with it. Like a SEO of sorts, the longer it’s aged, the contexts it’s used, will result in higher rankings.  Do you have your google driving license?    What if you want to change or segment identities? Will this mean having to have dozens of google email ids? I’m guessing so.

Being a comment stream from the peanut gallery, just like youtube comments I have my doubts it will be in many cases more than a place for snarks. While that can be entertaining, I suspect that many will find it mostly non-relevant so will turn it off by default. If that’s the case it then it won’t matter.

Moderating is tricky. Basically you as the owner of the site have the first word and like everyone else a vote.

Since this is an option on a toolbar that has to be installed it’s unclear what penetration this will have.  I for one don’t have the toolbar installed, but it’s that it hasn’t been tried as it’s bundled with many other applications.  I currenlty model it like youtube comments, they are on almost every video and the majority I find so junky I don’t read them. ..and try to hide them as they are more annoying than the ads.  However given the huge amount of comments on most video this is probably the exception. On others I have found the very valuable. There’s no automated way to separate those two.  Long term I imagine that google is looking to create a side bar disccusion similar to digg or slashdot which has similar problems.

CONS

Like any community dialog it’s subject to manipulation. Majority vote win. So it depends on the community surrounding the page,and the moderation.  High traffic pages are likely to get a continual stream of spammers.   While I haven’t tested I’m sure the moderators take hours to days, compare that to a weblog where comments can be deleted in minutes.

That conversation might be stale, relative to the site since it’s based on comments. Imagine a startup where the product rapidly changes, if people comment on rev1.0 but everything has been fixed in rev2.0 how long will it take for the comments to reflect that.  In that case it might be easier to start from scratch than to say “under new management”

For real businesses focusing on real this is yet another headache as the comments in the hands of sophisticated snarky or spammers may be an invisible graffiti.  This post goes over to the many real problems with screenshots of actual abuse.

That can be a hole in your ship if your value is based on selling things that are available elsewhere for free (e.g. PLR crap), basically you must have a unique selling position.

Since it’s (currently) a browser plugin frame, it won’t ever match your site. If you opt to have the comments integrated.

Yet another place to police what’s being said about you for both the good and the bad.

It’s not really what I consider a wiki, and most pages/sites don’t have the user base to keep things neutrally written and objective.

STRATEGIES

Since you don’t own it, you can’t control it 100% but you can as the site owner, post the first comment, and with tools integrate the comments into you site. You should definately police your site by using one of the many tools being developed or the RSS feed it provides.

The comments are tied to a particular url, and thus won’t work on SSL, and dynamically driven websites that have verbose dynamic urls, so if necessary (e..g sales carts) use that or other blockers to keep people being able to comment on it, but understand that the homepage of your site will not be able to be blocked so if you have a bad reputation it will follow you around.  You can of course change the url scheme of your site and this will break the comments, but it may also break your seo too.

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Troy

For More Information

Official Page

http://www.google.com/sidewiki/intl/en/index.html

Some (long and heated) discussion

http://www.buzzmachine.com/2009/09/23/google-sidewiki-danger/

http://www.marketersboard.com/google-sidewiki-controversy/