Davis ThinkingGoogle Sidewiki is a new feature being added today to the Google Toolbar that allows anyone to leave comments about pages as they surf the web. Love something you’re reading? Hate it? You can share your views with others who visit the page and who also have Sidewiki enabled. Share, that is, if Google thinks your comment is good enough. There have been any number of similar tools like this over the years, so many that I’ve lost track of their names (Third Voice was one — thanks, Ethan Kaplan). None really caught on. But this is Google, with millions of toolbars installed. That’s no guarantee of success that Sidewiki will get used, but it’s certainly worth sitting up and taking notice of. Below, how the Sidewiki system works.
I'm not sure why, but the phrase "real-time search" has somehow largely become associated with the phrase "Twitter search." While much of the conversation around real-time search centers conceptually on Twitter search and other engine algorithms that remix their data, the fact is that the Google crawl and many other viable contributors are critical to getting a fresh and relevant answer in real-time, though they are often lost in the discussion. Make no mistake about it, crawler-based real-time search and status-update search are both important to the successful development of a state-of-the-art robust and relevant real-time search engine.
Google started it. Social media, especially with tools like FriendFeed, magnified it - page one is the place to be. The top of page one is especially the place to be. Those few days when Conversation Agent was at number five on AdAge Power150 many checked out this blog from that list. From number 16? Not so much.
This is one area of social media and especially blogging that has always irked me. The belief that if you create great content, you are set. That your blog will be inundated with thousands of visitors just dying to get the chance to glimpse your verbal greatness.
One of the best ways to grow your blog, is to leave it. What I mean by this is leaving comments on other blogs is a great way to create value for others, and ultimately grow awareness for your own blogging efforts. But not all blog comments are created equal, and here's some of the tips I've learned over the years for writing great blog comments:
Yelp is a grassroots-driven business review website that has exploded in popularity in the last few years. That popularity has come with a fair share of troubles, from a lawsuit against a reviewer to shrill cries of extortion by businesses. In fact, Yelp has established a Myths page to dispel some of these misconceptions. However, the truth remains that Yelp is a very powerful guide for tourists and locals alike to find great restaurants and business wherever they might be. And soon, businesses might be able to have a public voice on the site for the first time.
Google Reader users can now leave comments on shared items. Google has introduced it as a way to have a discussion with friends outside of a site's main commenting system, and specific just to that shared item and their group of contacts.
Facebook Connect is getting in on the widget game. The service, which allows people to sign in to any supported site using their Facebook credentials, was previously available as an API for web developers, but the company has rolled out a new Comments Box widget which makes it dead simple to add Facebook Connect-powered comments to any website.
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