On September 23rd, google launched a special product, Sidewiki. Immediately after the emergence of Sidewiki, there was a sensation. This is not because of how innovative Sidewiki is, but because the emergence of Sidewiki may change the original rules of the Internet. Just as the search engine just appeared.
Sidewiki will be boycotted by the site
Sidewiki literal translation is "side wiki". In essence, anyone can post any comment on any sidebar of the webpage, and these comments are also visible to netizens. However, Sidewiki is directly controlled by google, and any website cannot control Sidewiki, which means that no website can control, intervene or delete comments from netizens on the website. It seems that the emergence and popularity of Sidewiki will inevitably be opposed and resisted by major websites.
Why do major websites resist Sidewiki in the same way? “You can use Sidewiki to comment, leave comments, and add footnotes on any website and webpage, and these comments can be known to the public. For example, netizens can use Sidewiki to supervise some very powerful websites because the website cannot review management users with Sidewiki. The comments posted, so what this website does, and what it publishes, can be supervised by Netizens using Sidewiki. This is equivalent to google giving users the right to supervise the Internet, and naturally the major websites will be unhappy." Ma Hongyong, a researcher at the new network laboratory, explained to reporters.
How to control Sidewiki
According to the reporter, most of the website reviews are displayed in reverse order, which means that the latest comments will be noticed by netizens. However, Google's Sidewiki does not use this rule. On Sidewiki, the higher the quality, the more valuable the comments, the more the position is displayed. Google believes that this will save users time, make it easier for netizens to see valuable comments, and at the same time be objective and fair to each website. And in order to be objective and fair, Google requires users to log in to post comments.
Although google has various rules to control Sidewiki, making the comments on Sidewiki as objective and fair as possible, and supervising the website, many users will register 'vest' to post various comments on Sidewiki, which is likely to be For the benefit of various purposes, for example, some users may make some false word-of-mouth communication for some electronic malls through Sidewiki to help the electronic mall to obtain more benefits; and some merchants may publish various advertisements through Sidewiki. It is google that needs to be considered and controlled in the future." Internet watcher Wu Yufeng told reporters.
Sidewiki creates a big community concept for the Internet
Of course, Google's supervision of Internet users through Sidewiki is only a feature of Sidewiki. Its real role is that Google can turn the Internet into a big community through Sidewiki. Google is the only person who can manage and control this big community. All websites have become content providers of this big community for users to comment and view, and Sidewiki is the channel.
"Netizens can use Sidewiki to comment on the pages of major websites. Naturally, this will form a big community concept, and Google can use Sidewiki to manage comments from users, so google becomes the manager of this big community, and the controller of the channel. Just like the search engine now controls the website. In the end, the website can only be reduced to the content provider of google." Liu Yong, senior product architect of the community website.
Future business opportunities for Sidewiki
According to many reporters, before Google launched Sidewiki, there have been similar websites. In the more than 10 years of the Young Web 1.0 period, a company called Third Voicer has made a webpage footer that allows users to post webpage reviews on major websites. However, in 1999, Third Voicer changed its model and gave up the footnotes of the webpage. Eventually, in 2001, Third Voicer closed down and the web footnotes disappeared. Until today, Google launched Sidewiki, and the footnotes of the webpage reappeared.
At the time, the Third Voicer footnote disappeared because the website operator of Third Voicer found the site comments difficult to generate business value. But Google has a lot of money, market and distribution channels, and the Google Toolbar has been used by millions of users. Therefore, it is not difficult to promote Sidewiki. Although the commercial value of Sidewiki has not yet appeared, but according to the performance of Google's past similar products (Adsense), Sidewiki will have a high commercial value in the long tail.
"Google can later use Sidewiki's web page comments to form a website ranking, or through Sidewiki to launch an advertising program like Adsense, which is a way to make Sidewiki a commercial value, so Sidewiki will have great business prospects." Ma Hongyong, a laboratory researcher, told reporters.
After Google launched Sidewiki, many websites thought that Google had stolen the management of comments from them, so the major websites have had many doubts about Sidewiki. However, in order to create a big community concept for the Internet, google will not easily give up Sidewiki, and Sidewiki may bring huge business opportunities to Google in the future.