Mountain View, California — Curious about reading other people’s comments — or even share your own — when you are surfing the net? Well, Google on Wednesday rolled out a new feature in its Toolbar called Sidewiki, a product that allows users to read and express their opinions about a Web page’s content, suggest links to other online resources or provide additional background information.
Sidewiki is the latest addition to the Google Toolbar that empowers users to read comments on any Web site and add their own in a special interface. “Google Sidewiki” appears as a narrow pop-up browser panel on the left hand side of a website and displays messages from users about the content of the page.
Sidewiki–shown on the left-hand side of this page–lets Google Toolbar users add comments to any Web page. (Credit: Google)
This concept has been tried-out before by others, but Sidewiki employs an algorithm to determine the quality of comments and ranks them accordingly, Google said Wednesday.
Google has created an algorithm that it claims can separate out apparent spam, naughty words, and the classic all-caps technique applied by some of the Internet’s more unhinged pundits, said Caesar Sengupta, group product manager at Google.
“The algorithm analyzes feedback from you and other users, previous entries made by the same author and many other signals we developed,” wrote Sundar Pichai, vice president of product management and Michal Cierniak, engineering lead for Sidewiki, in an official Google blog.
While exploring the Web with Google Toolbar installed, users can post comment about the whole content of a Web page or about particular portions of it and then release their comments through other social media sites like Blogger, Facebook, and Twitter accounts from the Sidewiki interface. The messages become visible to other users of Sidewiki who access the site and they can post their own comments, but they cannot edit the comments of others. In addition to text, Sidewiki entries can also contain video clips.
People can express whether they found other people’s comments useful or not by voting “yes” or “no.” Sidewiki also automatically imports to the sidebar other posts published elsewhere but that are relevant to that Web page.
Google, in a blog post, said Sidewiki was a way for Web users to contribute “insights” and “helpful information” next to any Web page.
Surely, it is a gigantic effort to ensure everyone that content providers appreciate Sidewiki comments, Google has attached several testimonials in its press release approving the service. Richard Gingras, CEO of Salon Media Group, for example, observes that Sidewiki could help users engage with its news reporting by “furthering the conversation around the issues we cover.”
Apart from similar comment services, such as Disqus, which Web site owners must install on their Web pages, Sidewiki connects itself with Web sites regardless of site owners’ wishes. It can do so because Internet users are free to add or subtract content to, or next to, existing Web pages using browser plug-ins that give third parties control over screen real estate. It’s called personalization.
To use the service, first download the Google Toolbar with Sidewiki. Installation takes only a few minutes. Once installation is finished, restart your browser.
After restarting your browser, the Sidewiki button will appear in the Google Toolbar. To see Sidewiki in action, go to a popular content site such as CNN.com. Select a story, and then click the Sidewiki button. If other Sidewiki users have already commented on the story, you will see a list of entries in a right-side column, or sidebar.
Do you have some impressive comments or additional information to share? Click “Write an entry” at the bottom left of the sidebar. (To add a comment, you will first have to log into your Google account.)
To separate out spam, off-topic remarks, and the all-too-common illiterate rants that plague comments sections of many sites, Sidewiki uses a “quality algorithm” in addition to user ratings to determine the order of entries that appear in the sidebar. You can vote on the usefulness of individual posts.
You can also distribute a Sidewiki comment via Facebook, Twitter, email, or Web link. Here is a Twitter example:
For more information on Sidewiki, check out a brief video demo below: