Google Sidewiki is a fun new tool that could make the entire web more social. It’s a toolbar that you download for your browser. Then, at any point in your Internet meanderings, you can stop and post a comment. You can also see what others have written before you.
Funny thing, though. You can only get the sidewiki toolbar if you are using Firefox or Internet Explorer. Even Google’s own web browser, Chrome, got left out of the party. I’m a Safari 4 man myself, but I set up sidewiki on a Firefox browser to give it a spin. Turns out, it’s a fun as it sounds. Here are some of the cool things that you can do with it.
1. Leave a special message on your own websites
If you have a verified domain with Google Webmasters, you can leave a special sidewiki comment that will always appear at the top of your web pages. I’ve been reading Dan Brown’s The Lost Symbol about Freemasons and secret codes this week and the idea of leaving a message only for the sidewiki initiates was probably way more fun for me than it should have been. (Psst, go to Advent’s home page once you get the sidewiki toolbar. It will be awesome.)
2. You can leave links
If I’m feeling like it, I can go to the front page of the New York Times and leave a link back to my blog in the sidewiki. (Actually, I’m going to do that right now.) Too easy right? Well, it is. There are some caveats. First, the link is not a follow link, meaning you don’t get any credit for it with the search engines. Still, you could get some traffic, but it all depends on how popular the sidewiki will become. The other thing keeping you from blog spamming popular sites is that people can vote your comment as helpful or not. If it’s not helpful, it drops into the abyss of the sidewiki. Apparently, it also has some ultra-sophisticated spam detection thing that will actually shock you through your keyboard if you try to link irrelevant crap. OK, I made the shock part up, but it’s not a bad idea. Linking with sidewiki could be a good thing as long as everybody uses it responsibly. I would go so far as to say that it’s only moral to link related, relevant, and helpful content on the sidewiki. Otherwise it will turn into the sidespammy, and we’re back to square one.
3. You can link to your comments
This is fun. I made a sidewiki comment about Reddit and then I posted the link to it on Reddit. It was hilarious … to me. I only got six karma points from it.
4. You can leave comments on blogs
Some people I’ve talked to have worried that sidewiki will replace the comments on blogs. It might, but so what? I’ll admit that you might lose a slight amount of SEO value if all the comments on your blog are very keyword-focused and on topic. But we all know the reason blog comments were invented was to give Internet trolls something to do when they’re not surfing porn. So why not just have that on the sidewiki? Many times we don’t even let search engines index the comments on our blogs so that we can better control the keywords. If sidewiki revolutionizes blog comments, I’m fine with that.
5. Profiles
For a long time now, you’ve been able to have a profile on Google. I’ve never felt like it, but I know some people who were into it. With the sidewiki, however, it finally seemed relevant. So, I threw my “angry” picture up and filled out a quick form. Now when I make a comment on the sidewiki you can seem me staring intensely back at you. (Everyone asks me why such an easy going guy like me uses the meanest looking photo I can find for my avatar. It’s simple: it’s the only photo I have of myself that’s safe for work.) With the profiles and the nearly unlimited commenting abilities, sidewiki is more than a toolbar, it’s a new social medium.
6. You can complain/give testimonials
So, a few years ago, a certain airline (Delta) ruined my life (for about one day). I won’t go into the details, but needless to say, I was angry. Angrier, actually, than I appear in my “angry” picture. Unfortunately, I had no recourse but to keep my fingers crossed as they filed for Chapter 11 … twice. With sidewiki, however, I can go and lodge a complaint in a way that I know they will pay attention. If the sidewiki becomes more popular, I can see this becoming a big online reputation management liability. On the other hand, it could also be used for testimonials. Imagine how impressive that would be.
WARNING: Don’t try to fake testimonials on a sidewiki. It’s very easy, especially right now while the technology is new, to see everyone an individual has commented. In a click or two, your ruse would be exposed and you would have no control over the fallout.
It will be interesting to see if Google’s sidewiki catches on. If it doesn’t, then I think we’ll see a second round of it and maybe a third round until it sticks. It overcomes one of the biggest barriers to the social web: waiting for people to make their websites interactive. With sidewiki you can go wild tagging the stuffier parts of the Internet up with your own clever word-graffiti. Have fun.