Comments on: Google’s Latest Ambition: A Universal Commenting System For The Web

By: Jonh

Jonh — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 10:50:15 +0000

Sidewiki – Crabzy – same but less powerfull.
I believe Sidewiki is nothing more than what offers Crabzy, and even less because Crabzy offers forum’s functionalities, where you can have dialogs, exchanges between users.
I’d rather go to Crabzy.com, but they both offer great value as this kind of service, if more developped, could really enrich the Web !!!!
For everyone’s benefit !!!!

By: Max Martinsson

Max Martinsson — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 20:44:23 +0000

Testar disqus

By: Devyn Cairns

Devyn Cairns — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 06:48:04 +0000

Oh come on, this is a direct copy of Hoodwink'd!

Too bad _why is gone though… :-(

By: jenkins

jenkins — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 01:41:33 +0000

this will fail/underperform as have many other Google products

By: Jordan Mitchell

Jordan Mitchell — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 00:50:16 +0000

Let's just wait and see if they get any traction with this. There are a LOT more pages on the Web than people, and with maybe only 1% of users contributing at all, it will take *significant* adoption of Sidewiki for them to reach critical mass.

By: Nosredna

Nosredna — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 23:51:53 +0000

Wouldn't that be "complementary" rather than "complimentary?"

By: Dave Chase

Dave Chase — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 23:10:36 +0000

Replace "Google" with "Microsoft" in the article and everyone would be screaming bloody murder as they did when Microsoft tried a loosely similar capability (i.e., a centralized feature spanning multiple websites). This is bad for the web. Google does much good but this time they have stepped in it.

By: ed dunn

ed dunn — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 21:51:47 +0000

While you guys wait for a unified/centralized solution, I'll just use the "share" button on this article and provide my comment to my inner circle on Twitter and Facebook…

By: Robert Andrews

Robert Andrews — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 19:52:38 +0000

So, annotation basically. As commenters have said, it's been tried since the mid/late 90s. But it tends to be browser-specific, which means it's never going to get mass adoption.

Which is not to say this isn't something we should *want*. Unified web profiles and messaging is something we need to move toward, and it takes the scale of something like a Google or a Facebook (or a Microsoft Passport) to do that. There's more likelihood of Facebook Connect or Google Friend Connect executing this global comments idea thamn Google's toolbar.

By: marqueymarc

marqueymarc — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 19:29:16 +0000

Nice to see this kind of thing resurface every year or two. Third Voice was a notable attempt in '99 and many more finely targeted systems have been built since, including Stickis by Activeweave, which I founded in 2005.

We added the concept of ovelaying rich media comments on the page itself, and restricting visibility to a facebook "friends" like subset of subscribed users. Very useful, but never gained mainstream traction, like many web annotation systems before and since.

Someday someone will crack this and make it simple enough, and I believe it will change the way we use the web pretty fundamentally. I suspect it wont be the text only and scattershot (everyone sees everything) approach described here, but great to see this being done.

Can't wait for the one that sticks!
Marc A. Meyer, ex-ceo Activeweave, Inc.