DISQUS

medxcentral (Jim) · 2 months ago

Phil.. thanks for your hard work on this article. I love the way you "break it down."

My instincts are telling me to keep my ear to the ground and listens to guys like you...while I wait for Google Wave to launch. I have a hunch...and only a hunch... that everything will tie to GW somehow.

Do you feel that way as well?

philbaumann · 2 months ago

@Medxcentral

I could see Google mixing SideWiki with Wave.

The problem Google has is that it hasn't been much of a leader in the social web business. Perhaps Facebook will counter with something of their own (they're problem, of course, is the walled garden).

Twitter as well could enter this business - develop some combination of TweetBoard, SideWiki and whatever their ReTweet project will be.

ReTweets on Twitter are already comments about a web page, in effect. So far, though, ReTweets are very limited metadata. If Twitter can engender, capture and consolidate comments via its own product, I could see an even more viral impact there. But I'm not sure if Twitter is ready to zoom out its focus on it core product just yet.

The challenge I think each company has is none of them have all of the ingredients. Google's got search down; Twitter has real-time; Facebook has numbers and social media.

We'll see if Wave rides or crashes on its hype.

medxcentral (Jim) · 2 months ago

Agreed. But I would say Google has numbers and big $$ as well as being the leader in search. That gives them the edge should they flex their muscle. I'm betting they have learned some SM lessons from Twitter, FB and FriendFeed, etc... and are circling the wagons. Something keeps telling me to keep watching until that "ah-ha!" moment happens. Your research is amazingly helpful to that end.

One thing's for sure; None of this will wait for anyone. We (companies and individuals) have to stay on top of it. So.. I really mean it when I say "thanks!" I can barely keep up.

philbaumann · 2 months ago

I have no doubts that Google is fiendishly working to catch up. Remember,
their mission is "To organize the world’s information and make it
universally accessible and useful". That has social media all over it. As a
media/advertising company, social information is perhaps the most important
for Google.

One thing Google needs to get right is affordances. Their problem still is
that they leave advanced features hidden. FriendFeed had this problem too.

medxcentral (Jim) · 2 months ago

Agreed.... Google keeps giving one key piece here...and one there...and even then, those pieces are not complete. I keep waiting for it to "gel." Hmmm... or... maybe it's like a soap on tv... a never ending story...always keeps you hanging...and is also never complete. Yah.. I don't know. I'd sure settle for 75% of their products pulled together though.

philbaumann · 2 months ago

Perpetual Beta.

Ed Bennett · 2 months ago

Phil,

Thanks for another great post. I added my comments in the sidwiki :)

http://bit.ly/SwLf0

philbaumann · 2 months ago

Thanks.
Now I can comment on Disqus. And SideWiki. And then tweet the comments and
start all over. :)

carmen2u · 2 months ago

Insightful post. Thanks. To ease the anxieties of some of my pharma clients, I would like to see some user control where there's an off-limits to SideWiki on some sites (e.g. medical information/ drug disclosure pages that are regulated by government). For political activists, this is a boon. Now, no corporate site is off-limits from public scrutiny. I can only imagine what would be written on the pages of AIG and other Wall Street companies as SideWiki becomes more popular. Graffiti writ large, I expect.

philbaumann · 2 months ago

Indeed - I'd imagine a lot of big brands will get a lot of graffiti, which
is common: the bigger the name, the louder the attention.

At this point, given the "geek" nature of SideWiki, I don't know how
widespread it will be adopted. Nevertheless, the proverbial cat is out of
the bag as far as distributed messaging is concerned.

Since the future is uncertain, my view is for organization to revisit their
communications and online strategies. The better companies are at engaging
with their base and earning their trust, the easier the task of confronting
detraction - or spamming or trolling. It won't be easy, but that's why
business is call business.

Dr. Thomas Ho · 2 months ago

I put a Google Sidewiki entry on my academic program's Web page http://cit.iupui.edu/ to encourage any posters to contact us directly. I hope that helps in a proactive way.

Neil Crump · 2 months ago

This is a really excellent article on sidewikis - I've been googling away trying to get a good understanding for the last few days and there was this post just sitting there in my reader! You have summed everything up brilliantly. My concern is that there is no notification function to inform you that a sidewiki has been left on a page. If you are running a huge website then how can you keep track of this? Especially since if this is meant to encourage engagement then you wouldn't know if the comment is there whether or not it is a bitch-slap or a compliment. I love to engage - it is just that now we have to check every page of our blogs / websites that we run in order to do it!!!

philbaumann · 2 months ago

Neil

Yes, not having any notification system is a real problem. As brazen as it
is for Google to have rolled this out, there should have been at least an
organized way of notification.

But since there's no opt-in and SideWiki can appear on almost any site,
there's no inherent way to notify the site owner.

Phil.