Why Sidewiki May be Okay
Friday, November 13, 2009 at 05:00PM 
I am a bit late to the game with comments on Sidewiki. (It launched more than a month ago.) A student in my Ryerson University reputation management class gave a presentation on it the other night which got me thinking that the debate about its influence on public relations has been thin. Surprising really given that some, like Mark Rose, believe Sidewiki "is a PR game changer".
Here's what Sidewiki allows you to do once you have installed the application: As Google describes it "Google Sidewiki is a browser sidebar that lets you contribute and read information alongside any web page."
In other words, you can write an un-moderated comment beside any web page you want. You can add anything you like (with the usual caveats about libel, perversion, vulgarity, etc.), provide your perspective on the page, add new information, share an anecdote, or add a link that sends readers somewhere else.
I believe Google uses an algorithm to rank Sidekwiki posts by relevance and credibility rather than chronology. Through its webmaster tools it will also allow the website owner always to have the first note in the sidebar.
Of course, the dangers are self-evident. My first Sidewiki contribution to the front page of the Globe and Mail was a complaint about the panic-inducing headlines and coverage of H1N1 in Canada's national newspaper. As much as I like to be helpful, I am just as likely to get frustrated by the content on organizations' web pages. Now I can have that frustration, even anger or disgust made evident to every other reader of the page with the Sidwiki app.
The debate about the ethics of being able to tread on the last piece of web ground that an organization could "own" should go on for a long time yet once people take the full measure of this new social combat tool. At least I hope it does. (If you want to see some pretty harsh and cogent criticisms take a look at the website called Sidewiki Sux.)
But Sidewiki may have one benefit. For those of us who get stonewalled whenever we suggest that organizations should pay more attention to their websites, make them more peppy and responsive, treat them less like a print annual report or marketing brochure and more like, say, a collaboration platform, this may be a turning point.
Could Sidewiki actually encourage (force) website owners to breathe life back into moribund web anatomies because people may actually be stopping by and, excuse the vulgarity, taking a piss on them?
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Reader Comments (3)
Hey Boyd,
Afraid I'm on the skeptical side of this debate (a la Jeff Jarvis). Sidewiki creates a host of problems - brand hi-jacking, being only one. I'm also less afraid of the "business-related" implications as I am of how others in society - such as youth - might use it - for example, to abuse or bully others directly on their blogs or Facebook pages.
Personally, if i had the option to disable it for my site, then perhaps I might be more inclined. But I agree with a commenter on BuzzMachine that:
"there is a difference between whether someone is talking about me on another site or whether that is happening (from a user point of view) on my own site. Anything that part of the user experience of my site should be within my control – at least where the content is concerned, I’m not talking about design. Don’t get me wrong, there is nothing wrong with criticism etc. But I want to be able to eliminate obscene comments, fraudulent posts or similar things. If these things are on friendfeed then they are clearly separated from my site. But if they are in a frame adjacent to my site than that separation vanishes. And that, for me, is a problem."
An important discussion, but I also wonder whether Sidewiki can win, where other attempts in the past at allowing people to "paste" their comments directly on a site - you recall the Firefox plug in that did it in the form of "sticky notes" - have made little or no traction. That said, it is Google.
As much as I like the anarchy of the Internet (my politics are peaking out here), I think you are probably right. I suspect you are also right in your email to me that the Sidwiki battle will be fought in the courts before we see its influence spread to the point of us having to develop many client strategies for managing it.
I was just reading in the New York Times today about Apple's application for a patent on technology that will allow intrusive opt-out-only advertising . . . now that I found even more scary . . . although I do sense a trend here.
As a relative innocent in technology, I find the idea that people can just "piss" on people's websites rather repellent. Not least because it seems rather sneaky. If, as a small firm, you've managed to get a website up and running but you're not so deep into technology that you watch for new applications like a hawk, you can be unknowingly ambushed by some smart arse who thinks they can do better/provide more/more accurate/different information. My personal feeling is that if you have a point to make about someone's website - tell them directly. It strikes me that those in the IT know are possibly having an unpleasant laugh behind other people's backs.
I expect I'm wrong to think about it in such a personal way, but it seems a childish application. Couldn't people be doing something more useful?