By Miguel Helft
Google is rolling out a new service on Wednesday that will allow users to post notes alongside Web sites that can be read by other users. The service, called Sidewiki, will be a new feature of the Google Toolbar, a popular browser add-on.
Sidewiki users could, for instance, provide an account of their own travel recommendations for Paris next to a travel Web page for that city. Other users visiting that page would see that there are comments on a thin left-hand sidebar and click on it to read them.
Sidewiki will compete against a handful of startups that perform similar functions. None has gained much popularity.
Google says Sidewiki has some unique features. For instance, it uses a complex ranking algorithm to evaluate the quality of comments using “what we know about the author, and user-contributed signals such as voting and flagging.” Only highly rated comments will be shown. Google said it spent most of its engineering effort on the ranking algorithm.
Sidewiki will also post notes across multiple sites that have the same content, so a note about a Barack Obama quote may appear on multiple Web sites that have published that quote. Sidewikis can include video content and can be shared easily with others via Facebook, Twitter and other services, Google says.
The idea of a service to annotate Web sites has been around for a decade. Back in the Web 1.0 days, a start-up called Third Voice allowed people to post unmoderated comments on sites. After receiving some initial buzz in 1999, the company changed its model a year later and eventually shut down its service altogether in 2001. Some Web site operators complained that the comments were nothing more than Web graffiti.
Of course, Google’s Sidewiki will have an advantage over its predecessors: wide distribution. The company’s toolbar is used by millions of people.
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