I stumbled across news of Google Sidewiki a few days ago. It was launched on Sept. 23 – just over a week ago but I was not aware of that at the time I found it. I thought it was just an interesting novelty. People had not yet heard of it and I thought that meant it was nothing important. But when I realized how new it was and as I started to consider the possibilities, I was stunned. I like Google as much as the next person but this new little feature was going to take control of the corporate web page away from the corporation into the hands of an army of individuals with ideas and opinions of their own. This was essentially going to take what was a one-way communication into a babble of voices.

For a simple explanation of Sidewiki, I quote (with bold text added by me) from the post on prblognews.com that I’ve linked to below:

…anyone with an easily installed Google Sidewiki app, can write notes that are then visible to anybody else. The general public – adversaries, friends, competitors, your nephew – can enhance your web page without your consent or knowledge.

Google advertises the product as a new way share expertise. I’m afraid my first thought was, “expertise, my a**”. This is open season for spammers, pr manipulators, and just general mischief makers. Take a look at the video below and read the prblognews.com article.

Go to the full article: Google Sidewiki is PR Game Changer

If you’re not considering a social media strategy, now is the time to start thinking about it. Will you control the message or will you let it be controlled?

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This entry was posted on Monday, October 5th, 2009 at 10:24 am and is filed under General, Sidewiki, Social Media - Organizing Your Strategy, Types of Social Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.