Annotate the Web: Google Launches Sidewiki
Over the years, numerous companies have offered services that allowed users to annotate web pages. Now, with a new project called Sidewiki, Google is going to join the fray as well. Sidewiki, which will be distributed with a special version of the Google Toolbar for Firefox and Internet Explorer, allows users to publicly annotate any page on the web. Entries will then be sorted by an algorithm that filters out low-quality comments and moves the most interesting items to the top.
The sorting algorithm and Sidewiki's ability to display notes about the same topic on various sites make Sidewiki somewhat unique. Google uses a quote from a speech by President Obama as an example here. Sidewiki will recognize the quote on multiple sites and aggregate them together, no matter whether somebody commented on this quote on Little Green Footballs or Daily Kos. You can also leave a comment about the entire page, of course.
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.
API: Making SideWiki a Universal Commenting System
A lot of companies have tried to offer similar services and the ones that have succeeded did so because they focused on a very specialized market. We will have to see where this Google project goes in the long run, but unlike a lot of other companies that offered annotation features, Google will offer an API for Sidewiki. The Sidewiki Data API will give developers the ability to access all of these comments and include them on their own sites or in a widget, for example.
How Will Google Use this Data?
We can't help but wonder how Google will use the data it gathers from this service. After all, there is often valuable information in comments. Google, for example, could use sentiment analysis to see its users' reactions to a page and then influence search results accordingly. The company could also expose some of this data in the search results. Outside of Sidewiki, Google currently only exposes annotations in a user's Google Profile.
Right now, when a forum post appears in Google, it will display some extra data about how many posts there are and how many authors contributed. Google could do something similar for every page with Sidewiki - though chances are that third-party developers will quickly build a Firefox addon or Greasemonkey script that will do the same within a few days from now.
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I hope the API will be opened to other sentiment based search engines like http://rankspeed.com
very curious to see this sorting algo. suspect more activity in the sentiment analysis field will start to ramp up as a result of this enhancement
I might have used it, but it's integrated with the Google toolbar, which I don't want to have to install and have loaded just to get the annotations. I hope they release it as a separate add-on for Firefox.
I agree with Gaby, nay to the Google Toolbar.
Hey wasn't this called "Third Voice" 10 years ago?
http://www.wired.com/techbiz/media/news/2001/04/42803
opened API
wat abt integrating the feature into google chrome ?
No Google Toolbar for me ...
not sure I like this side wiki idea either... To easy for people to (sorta) put junk on your website without your authorization... I know the data is separate - but .. it's close enough.
“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.”
This is just very unfortunate events are recorded in this way.
TC50, Demo and the others… besides the few people there looking to make some real moves, these events are nothing more than a thief-fest.
We need to stop believing that these big companies are out to acquire, but be more cautious that they consult their legal teams after every event to see just what they can keep after convention looting.
Yes, searched about the sidewiki...looks helpful. The only thing Google needs to work on is chrome. All it's other features are good anyway.
Madison
sidewiki - maybe, tool bar - forget it, don't need any other toolbar so I sure don't need this one. Firefox extension I'd consider, providing it interop'd with AOIS.
I might consider if it weren't tied to Google Toolbar. I've got more than enough memory and CPU hogging extensions in Firefox, and I don't care to add any more, just to show another page in the sidebar.
As for what shows up in SideWiki, is Google planning to allow site owners to moderate anything that people write on sites with this? I see a lot of potential for abuse by spammers and competitors, not to mention trolls et al. Google should allow site owners to opt out from this project.
"We can't help but wonder how Google will use the data it gathers from this service."
Perhaps a way to tell what pages are trending based on high activity?
I love the example sidewiki comments:
Reid ellis says...
The original web servers had an affordance for users...Well it sooned died out because it was obvious that servers couldn't handle the load in the foreseable future, and it was of limited usefulness...but now we have Google with its farm of servers.
Sure we have the space now... but have we resolved the issue of limited usefulness??
Im the first one to sidewiki you guys!
You guys kick butt!
This is going to be a legal nightmare. For a few $100 you could hire a bunch of people to set up fake gmail accounts then leave good or bad comments on target sites. Imagine being able to comment on any web page without moderation? The mind boggles.
Hopefully Google will come up with a system for webmasters to block sidewiki comments. Maybe in the robots.txt file?
This is a great idea in theory, but it's going to end up looking like search results. I hope there's going to be a way to change from all public annotations to ones you have chosen. Seems like it could be a really efficient way to work on collaborative research projects.
By the way if you leave any links in the comments, they end up being nofollow which kind of defeats the purpose. Why bother...
I agree with everyone else -- lets not give google any more info on our browsing habits. Enough already...
Google grabbed idea Yousticker.com
http://yousticker.com - it's social utility tool for commenting everything everywhere on the web
Without toolbar and support all browsers!
Have support signup from twitter, google, openid account
Crosspost in your twitter
Followers, Following, Groups, Privacy
You can prevent Toolbar users from defacing your site by adding the following to your htaccess file. It redirects GTB users to a page explaining why they can't access your site. You have to create the page and put its name in the RewriteRule.
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} GTB [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} GoogleToolbar [NC]
RewriteRule !^nogtb\.php$ /nogtb.php [L]
Ms issue is: I don't like the Google Toolbar, actually I don't use any browser plug-ins because you never know what's happening behind the curtain (do they track what I'm doing all day long?). That's why I use Fytch for Social Commenting (actually Fytch was covered by ReadWriteWeb a couple of weeks ago). All you need is a bookmarklet, no download, no plug-in. This makes it easy to use it anywhere, even on foreign machines (University). Plus, it works with all kinds of browsers.
I presume that Google will begin advertising on this thing, which will hijack any monetization you have on your site.
This is pure evil. Never expected it from Google. Just because they can.
Why should someone be able to piggyback on all the hard work a site owner has done to direct traffic to her web site? And leave competitive or defamatory comments? Or drive traffic to another web site?
Goodbye Google juice.
No right to monitor comments before they post?
We're trusting Google algorithms here?
Are we nuts?
Another firefox plugin without the google toolbar part: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/13337