Sidewiki Comment Reader from Digital Inspiration

Google Sidewiki Comments for: http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2009/09/launching-brands-in-public.html

# 1. On 02.26.2010, Laurence Cope wrote: Great idea. One stop shop for REAL feedback and discussion about brands. Without such feedback we are the mercy of brands' positive marketing spins for poor quality products and services. Publishing real discussion forces brands to address any negative issues and improve their services, or they will fail. If a brand draws a lot of negativity, then they clearly do something wrong and we the public want to know. If they are doing it all right, then great, this strengthens their brand.

I am sick of large organisations providing poor quality products and services yet still selling strong due to effective marketing campaigns. Effective marketing campaigns do not represent the brand quality, but a means for low quality brands to be successul. We need feedback on the real brand behind its successful marketing.

The problem is this service is too expensive for small organisations and clearly aimed at large organisations with the sole intention of making a lot of money for the site owner. It sounds like a simple concept being exploited for big bucks. In this Web 2.0 culture this should be a service aimed at everyone at affordable prices. permalink

# 2. On 11.11.2009, Mike Ellsworth wrote: I don't get the comment about legality. As long as Godin doesn't claim his pages represent the brand or use their trademarks, I don't see how publicly aggregating public information can possibly be legal.

And doing it without permission might be rude, but it certainly is within Godin's rights.

But it may have turned out to be a bad idea, as he has changed the service to an opt-in. permalink

# 3. On 10.07.2009, Chris Kieff wrote: I think Seth's concept is brilliant because I firmly believe the future is for aggregators to come up with excellent ways to separate the wheat from the chaff. There is too much content now so it's value is declining. However, finding the quality content and delivering that quality for people is the value proposition of the future.

Now that Seth's let this particular cat out of the bag, he needs to follow through or others will. You can't put this genie back into the bottle. Figuring out how to make this work in a beneficial way that's non-threatening will be Seth's challenge.
Good Luck with that.
Chris permalink

# 4. On 09.25.2009, Andrew E. Goodman wrote: I have some serious problems with SearchWiki itself, but how ironic is this, I'm already using it because it seems to be the only way to join this conversation where a few of my friends are already making good points.

Seth has given me literally dozens of conceptual tools to help me succeed in business, from permission marketing, to purple cow, to the dip, to avoiding really bad powerpoint, to "tv-industrial complex," ... and many others. Because of that, I'd gladly give him a freebie. He helps more than he hurts, and we all have the right to make a living and none of us is perfect in the way that we leverage relationships for their multiplier effect. If the web is about the attention economy then anyone at the top of that economy engages in some form or another of paid influence peddling whether they admit to it or not.

Danny's assessment simply points to the obvious *form* of influence peddling here, and that's using a high-reputation site to sell something to companies that expect those pages to come up high in SERP's. Since link selling is explicitly frowned on, this is some other way of selling high PageRank, or if not that, then high search visibility potential of pages.

But, Danny, that practice is so widespread and so legitimate, I think maybe that criticism dilutes itself into such a muddy gray area that maybe that particular dog won't hunt. TripAdvisor ranked companies or Yelp or Urban Spoon reviews are all "threats" to mentioned businesses because of their high rankings in SERP's. But they won't rank high in SERP's long term unless they're truly useful pages.

In other words, if companies and consumers start duking it out on those Squidoo pages, that's a credit to Squidoo, $400 or no $400.

The real challenge is for Google to stop all companies from getting ranked on all sorts of misdirection plays, taking a successful reputation site and then ranking on all kinds of new things they branch out into. TripAdvisor's site can be hijacked by a furniture store building a wiki page about itself, and that page could rank high. That's a hole in Google, and TripAdvisor's exploiting it, so both are "at fault."

Overall, this doesn't quite pass the smell test.

I have to admit that I agree with econsultancy's writer in that I don't feel this type of service adds value, because it begins with a pretty threatening premise and a weak starting point. It quacks like some rather lame ducks.

Three that come to mind. And forget TripAdvisor, Yelp, my own friends at HomeStars, and the other major consumer reputation-builders-or-wreckers for now.

1. There are a variety of bogus B2B business directories that provide accurate information on no one, and distorted information on everyone, in that vertical. Those who pay get their numbers faked and top 5 rankings in the industry. Yecchhh. How is this similar to a "scraped" brand page? It's similar in that misleading information is held up as a way of getting the business owner to be spooked into paying to gain more control over the inaccurate conversation.

2. I don't study them closely, but you know all of those sites like ZoomInfo and the like that scrape what appears to be info about you personally, and hope to rank high in the SERP's. Maybe you can fix your own mangled profile by claiming your listing and so on, but if the intent is to mangle for profit, that's kind of a personal attack (and not a useful page) and ultimately those pages shouldn't rank well at all in SERP's.

3. Is Google Profiles a sort of polite, free version of #2? "We know your personal profile everywhere else including on Google may be mangled and fragmented, so now you can make yourself an official one here. Just give us all your data and as usual upload a bunch of info to help us, and away you go! You now have more control over your reputation's destiny."

Managing a reputation is complicated. I don't think simplifying it by charging $400/mo. to let you claim one certain type of page is good value.

That being said, even those couple of examples I've given above show just how widespread the same process se permalink

# 5. On 09.25.2009, Isaac Pigott wrote: Thierry, to answer your question:

SideWiki is a direct threat to what Seth is attempting to do because it re-fractures the conversation.

Since SideWiki entries don't (yet) appear in any RSS feed, they can't be siphoned into Seth's lenses. And since you have to have the toolbar installed to see them, they can be all over your page and you'd never know it.

(We both know there is a sizeable installation base for Google Toolbar... and I switched back to Firefox yesterday from Chrome just to monitor what was happening on the pages I am tasked to monitor.)

In the end, it puts everyone back on an equal footing -- the only winner is Google. permalink

# 6. On 09.25.2009, Seth's Blog wrote: permalink

# 7. On 09.25.2009, Laurent Bourrelly wrote: As I explained to Seth by eMail, it is not about building a scraper or not. This type of site exists since the Web is Web.
However, I found very disturbing the way to sell it. My point of view is explained in http://www.laurentbourrelly.com/blog/250.php (in French).
Mainly, the site, in the actual format, is not a benefit to brands. I agree with Danny's above comment. If such a tool would be useful, it should be managed internally. Being public only benefits Seth. permalink

# 8. On 09.24.2009, Allen Taylor wrote: This doesn't look like a good idea at all. But if you are so passionate as to leave the kind of response that Danny left here, why not also put that comment in the blog comments so that more people can read it and give Seth Godin a chance to respond to the audience that will care about the discussion the most? permalink

# 9. On 09.24.2009, Ian Lurie wrote: ...This is a bad idea. You're 'outing' brands without their permission.

Yes, it's all public information. Yes, folks can find it anyway.

That doesn't mean you put it on a billboard without so much as a by-your-leave.

Please reverse the program so folks pay to be included.

Don't charge me $400 to take down someone else's graffiti. permalink

# 10. On 09.24.2009, Wing Nut wrote: I'm really happy for you and all, Seth, and I'ma let you finish - but RipOffReport had the best rank for someone name and charge them money site of all time - all time! permalink