Many years ago, in 1999, a bunch of smart people launched Third Voice, a social web annotation tool. Users could leave behind virtual post-its as they wandered the web, and other users could read them. In principle, a democratization, the founders envisioned the swarm debunking lies, clarifying news, and taking back the huge agora of the web from the commercial interests that seem to be running rampant.
Yawn.
The company generated interest, but never really hit anything like mass usage, and even the hand waving of its opponents never led to any serious uptake. After a round of VC came in, the company veered sharply right, trying to become a commercial search tool, and largely jettisoning its radical rhetoric. After languishing for a bit, the company was shuttered sometime in 2001, I think.
Now, the Third Voice model has reappeared again, in the guise of Fleck, which is positioned as a new kind on interactivity for the web. Leaving aside the highflying Memex rhetoric, it's virtual post-it notes for the web.
Basically, the service is tracking where on a specific page you want to post a note. A plugin in Firefox accesses the notes database whenever a user lands on a new page, and looks up if there are any notes, and then renders them on a layer hovering above the page. The plugin and various others tools, like javascript widgets embedded in blogs, can be used to create new notes.
I am dubious about the tool, although blogging wasn't a real force back in the day when True Voice took a run at this, and Fleck plans to support integration with blogs, although at the moment that is rudimentary. Perhaps if a user can both leave behind notes on pages, and collect them as blog posts, it might act like a univeral trackback, something like del.icio.us, except visible when you wander around. I can also envision a Matt Webb style navigation capability that could be derived form the database, if it ever gets large enough (see Me.dium and Reboot: The 3 Threes).
I will watch and see if user adoption takes off, but given the extremely limited social dimension currently implemented -- sharing by sending messages, and by pasting links into blog posts -- I don't see viral explosion as likely.
I just met these guys last night. Compelling concept. Would have to see how it does what it does before I pass judgement. It sounds to be an iffy tool because it relies on browsers (and we all know how well browsers do thing in a standard way. It's also browser-based tools like this that are often classified as spyware.
So, I'll reserve judgement on the implementation until I have a chance to see the service in action.
Posted by: Aaron Brazell | November 17, 2006 at 09:09 AM
There's also gabbly which allows commenting in a chat room like format.
However, I am amused that you should mention Third Voice - an idea that was probably just too early for its time - I remember all of the outrage on Slashdot about Third Voice back in 1999 (gee, I *feel* old).
I searched for the older Third Voice threads, but could only find this this comment. In addition, I just found this blog entry from 2004 from someone remarking on the annotation engines just two years ago.
Basically it seems that the sweet spot for Web annotation or meta commenting or whatever you want to call it, hasn't been hit yet.
Posted by: joy | November 19, 2006 at 08:48 AM