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What Google’s new Sidewiki means to marketers

September 28, 2009 |

Last week, Google released Sidewiki, a Google Toolbar-based plug-in that allows anyone to add her own shared side notes to any Web page. The basic idea is that every page on your site now comes with a publically accessible discussion board that cannot be moderated.

Before brand managers start jumping out of windows to avoid being yelled at by your bosses who can't understand why people would be allowed to do this (and I'm sure they will), Google has built in some controls. First, there's an algorithm that determines which comments are more relevant and moves them to the top of the sidebar. Of course, exactly how relevance is determined has yet to be explained (and probably never will be), leading to yet another SEO (define) type battle, where "experts" duke it out over whether they can get your comments to the top of the heap.

Sidewiki also includes a number of social features, including one for voting on a comment's usefulness and another for reporting abuse. According to the "report a policy violation" page, "abuse" is defined as being spam, illegal content, or content that advocates hate or violence. The same page warns users, however, that "just because you disagree with someone's point of view does not mean it violates any policies" and urges users who think that the comments may infringe on their copyright to file an official Digital Millennium Copyright Act complaint. Yeah, good luck with that.

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