Search giant Google “gets” the power of Social Media with its Google Friend Connect and upcoming Google Wave. Astoundingly, Google still doesn’t quite get the “Party” aspect of Social Media! In fact, its new browser tool SideWiki is a potentially devastating example of “crashing the Social Media Party!” Read on if you want to understand why…

The brouhaha and controversy surrounding this particular Google experiment is fascinating to watch. On one side, some people state that the potential hijacking of sites by this new tool (aka Big Brother Google) is way overblown. Supporters believe it’s a great way to “spread the wealth” (Google? been drinking the coolaid?) of information, opinion and content throughout the web. Opponents decry the obvious (except to Google, apparently) massive opportunities for abuse by scammers, spammers, competitors and freaks.

What is Google SideWiki? It’s a browser toolbar plugin for Firefox and Internet Explorer. It allows anyone with the plugin installed to make comments on any site that is not password protected and view the comments of others. But it differs from comment capability on most sites, especially frequently updated sites like blogs. Blog comments can be moderated by the blog owner, eliminating 90% of spam comments and attempts to hijack affiliate links through comment spamming, keeping articles and comments useful for the site visitor. SideWiki comments cannot be moderated by the site owner, though the website’s webmaster can make highlighted comments on the comments appearing on the SideWiki comments next to their site.

While others have addressed the issue of potential legal issues, and hijacking of traffic by Google through SideWiki from site owners who paid Google for AdWords traffic, and the proliferation of spam throughout the SideWikis, I’d like to address a very important element of what makes Social Media so powerful: the Party itself.

As one prominent Social Media guru said: Social Media is like a party. One of the realities of any party is that you just don’t breeze in the door uninvited, butt into every conversation with self-promotion and marketing messages, and expect a warm welcome. If you DO, you’ll quickly get the reactions of party guests to your hijacking of the party, probably getting booted from the party. Yet this is exactly what Google is doing with this move. Unfortunately for website owners, at this point there is no way to boot Google’s SideWiki out of your party.

Have an opinion, a question, a solution? Leave a comment.

Expect success!

Stevie Knight