stoweboyd and the /messengers

Jeremiah Owyang stumbles around in the brush, trying to figure out what Google is up to now that they have release Sidewiki. Sidewiki is not a wiki, but does appear on the left hand side of various browsers, so the name is merely half-wrong. And perhaps the product is too.

Sidewiki is a page commenting tool, reminiscent of Third Voice and Me.dium. Oddly, you have to install the entire Google toolbar to get it to work, which is a hassle, but then you could see comments from others who have visited and 'sidewikied' on any page.

Jeremiah suggests that Sidewiki is part of a grand strategy, and suggests that it involves their beachhead in email:

[via Google’s SideWiki Shifts Power To Consumers –Away From Corporate Websites]

Expect Google to evolve this feature [he means Sidewiki, which is more like an app than a feature] with existing systems. Google recently launched profiles, a feature that is the foundation for extending their social reach. With large social networks like Gmail already in place (That’s right, email is a social network) they can eventually sort content on SideWiki by context of friends, experts, or other sources. Google’s strategy is to ‘envelope’ the web this is typical of their approach.

I find it odd that Owyang doesn't mention Google Wave -- an ambitious and mindbending collaboration system -- or Gmail's contacts as other function points where Google could push something like Sidewiki.

But I don't see how or why Gmail plays here, though. Email is an inherently closed system -- only those on the to: and cc: line can see an email -- and it has its own approach to threading of discussions. Gtalk might be a more interesting place to conjecture about opening up to a more public commenting space, but you run aground yet another threaded discussion model.

Sidewiki seems to fight with Google's Friend Connect system in a way, although FC requires the owner of the website to install FC javascript to get it to work at present. But the modern mania for framed-in pages with a navigation bar (a la StumbleUpon and various URL shorteners) suggests an alternative way for extending the social functionality on a site.

Unlike Jeremiah, I guess I can't see a grand strategy here, and no likelihood that it will pop up in email. And I am surprised that Google has resurrected a social pattern in Sidewiki that has been tried so many times before without great success, but has not pushed into the very interesting space that Discus, JS-Kit and others are occupying, with external and connected commenting systems. Maybe they could cook something up with Sidewiki.