www.techcrunch.com/2009/09/23/google-steps-where-many-have-stumbled-sidewiki -> www.techcrunch.com/2009/09/23/google-steps-where-many-have-stumbled-sidewiki/
Sidewiki is part of Google Toolbar (and it will be built directly into Google's Chrome browser). Users activate the service by clicking on a button and a sidebar appears to the left of whatever website is being viewed.
stalwart Google partner MySpace is left off for now, but Google says they'll add more partners later). All those votes will create a user ranking for each individual that will determine where their comments fall on the Sidewiki. The goal, Google says, is to help move better content up and move spammy stuff to the bottom where it won't be seen.
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." It's unlikely that websites will have the same visceral reaction today that they did to Third Voice a decade ago. And Google solves the chicken-and-egg problem nicely by building this into Toolbar. The real question is whether they can control spam, which has plagued SearchWiki. And I guess the other real question is, how long until they put ads in it? Google Toolbar users will be upgraded over the next several weeks automatically and offered the use of Sidewiki.
September 23rd, 2009 at 8:22 am CDT It's great to see Google getting into this game with such a cool product. We have some pretty big differences in our product, namely that we only allow our dots to live at a paragraph level (vs. This lets us distribute them around the web to other relevant articles using our engine, generally magnifying' every user's contribution by an order of magnitude. We're also focusing on making it easier for creators of high-quality third-party information to link it with the news, as well as allowing users to "curate" information found elsewhere into the relevant news. We aren't trying to get original content like SiteWiki, but rather helping get existing, high-quality content linked everywhere. Lastly, we are going to be bringing these user dots to publishers with our script-tag version that's coming soon. The highest-ranked dots appear as a small dot icon inline in the articles themselves (with full control by the publisher), giving readers access to additional media and sources without having to open a sidebar or leaving the article. Anyways, looks like Google's done a great job here with their product.
September 23rd, 2009 at 10:52 am CDT Here's what is says when trying to use with Google Chrome.... "Sidewiki is currently a feature in Google Toolbar (in Internet Explorer and Firefox), but when Google Chrome supports extensions, we will work on building it for Google Chrome, too."
September 23rd, 2009 at 9:16 am CDT "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. 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.
September 23rd, 2009 at 9:05 am CDT But won't webmaster paranoia help kick start this SideWiki? If some 3rd party tool for web page annotations, no matter how excellent it is, is allowing users to post possibly negative comment about my site's pages then I'm not too worried about the impact. But if it's Google with its #1 search status, I'd be checking daily. So distracting or not, wouldn't you be checking your TechCrunch articles to see what people are saying about you?
September 23rd, 2009 at 7:55 am CDT I tried fleck and i agree, it's quite the same idea here. I guess the real issue with this kind of services is that actually few people spend their time commenting or writing reviews about products etc..
September 23rd, 2009 at 9:10 am CDT Very good point about the 1% and who knows how much marketing muscle they'll put behind SideWiki. But if they put a link to the tool on the Google Search home page then 1% of many millions of people could end up being a huge crowd.
September 23rd, 2009 at 9:48 am CDT You are correct they are. The wind will blow down their saplings because they grew up being too stiff. Too data driven, and not enough balance with intuition and guts............
September 23rd, 2009 at 9:13 am CDT For political sites, some people (like me) might use it to point out how an article is lying or misleading. The problem is that most of the visitors to that site will support that site's POV and will vote down comments that show how the site is misleading. And, if someone (like me) has a habit of showing how sites are misleading, their sidewiki ranking will suffer and their comments will show up last. IOW, instead of this helping show how various articles are misleading, it will simply enforce the POV of the majority of the site's visitors. com/zymbwoq The comment I left (choose earliest first) in which I pointed out that the story is inaccurate has -111 diggs. Meanwhile, the first comment that loads on that page is worthless and has over 600 diggs.
September 23rd, 2009 at 9:29 am CDT "it will simply enforce the POV of the majority of the site's visitors" Or enforce the opinion of the best script bot writer until adequate anti-bot measures are added to the software.
And spam it, and every other major problem that crowd editable sites face (and deface). Just wait for all the seemingly innocuous comments on Acme widget pages like: "Great article! " And unlike blog comments you can't delete them or change them and who determines what is spam and how to eliminate it (if you can at all)?
September 23rd, 2009 at 8:32 am CDT I hope Third Voice got a patent for this, another example of a big company raping an idea from a smaller less successful company.
I, for one, am glad that companies 1-up each other (assuming that's what you meant by "Silicon Valley way of doing things"), otherwise just about everything would..
September 23rd, 2009 at 10:28 am CDT Also Robby, Google themselves own a ton of patents. The "1-upping" Google did (very well I may add) was patentable. Amazon holds a "1-click" patent that gives them an unfair advantage. I don't believe anyone should develop anything without the chance of patenting for protection. Any development team that feel otherwise should release products as open source (GNU). And why not, it's open season on ideas without patent protection in the first place.
September 23rd, 2009 at 8:36 am CDT I would use this in Chrome if the sidebar was collapsed by default and simply told me how many comments there were available. However I use Firefox (waiting until Chrome gets the extensions I need) and I don't want to have to install an entire toolbar which duplicates a lot of the functions I already have (yikes, I sound like Apple talking to Google). I really like the idea, as long as the comments provide useful info, insights, links, etc. I think this would work far better for a Wikipedia article than a TechCrunch article, which already has a whole comments section (albeit an overcrowded and bitter one).
September 23rd, 2009 at 12:18 pm CDT You can customize your toolbars and just take the parts from the Google toolbar that you want. I've had the page rank bar displayed between the address bar and my Firefox search box for at least a year, and I've just added the icon for Sidewiki while I try it out.
September 23rd, 2009 at 8:42 am CDT I think it is a good idea, there is also a startup that makes something similar plus few more stuff like chatting, web-widgets etc etc.
September 23rd, 2009 at 9:48 am CDT Hi Brandon, I unlike many others feel that using the comments section at TechCrunch to place links to their endeavors is what you are supposed to do if you are really passionate about your idea.
com/toolbar/ Their unit already have ofer 300 million users attached to it, so my question to you is: 1) Did you get funding for your company, like are you really pitching this to someone?
The idea has always seemed potentially useful to me, but difficul...
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