Google has just rolled out SideWiki, a Google Toolbar option that when triggered will display a sidebar facility where anyone can add comment and publish it to the web for others to see and read.
The Sidewiki entries will be displayed based on relevancy determined by a new algorithm. This algorithm will determine the most useful, high-quality entries based on feedback from other users, previous entries made by the same author and other signals which Google deemed important in determining the importance of a Sidewiki entry.
To add more insights about a particular page, Sidewiki will also bring in relevant blog posts and other sources which discusses a particular web page.
Google Sidewiki is a Google Toolbar feature currently available only for Firefox and Internet Explorer. Sidewiki for Chrome will be available later. Google is also releasing the first version of the Sidewiki API for developers.
You can start using Sidewiki by downloading the newest version o f Google Toolbar with Sidewiki as one of the feature at google.com/sidewiki.
Sidewiki seems to be a pretty nice feature but what’s really not clear is whether it would be an “annotation” or “commenting” feature that is universal in nature. The good thing about it is that it uses your Google account, so you are pretty sure that comments posted on your web page will be coming from Google account holders. Although it would be very easy to abuse this by online hecklers who can easily create a bogus Google account and start spamming a particular site using Sidewiki.
What do you think? Do you see yourself using Sidewiki to annotate your favorite site?
