I agree with you that people need to be more focused on mo’ better content and will need to be more transparent on the web out of necessity, but it’s been 6 months since SideWiki has debuted now and I’m very apprehensive about the reality of the widespread adoption rate. Apple.com only has like, 4 entries on its SideWiki and all but one are positive. I had to install Google Toolbar on my FF just to be able to SEE SideWikis and through browsing I haven’t found many sites even using them. I added one to my site out of curiosity yesterday to see if anybody will even find it.

I’ve gotten the picture that this is another idea that Google had that might be a cool idea but just won’t take off the way they’d like it to. I’ve talked to many web users, some your “Average Joe websurfer” and some more power users like you and me, and most hadn’t heard of it, those that had heard of it didn’t really understand what it was, and nobody really seemed to care much.

Personally, from a user perspective, I see it as simply TMI and not really necessary. If I go to, say, a restaurant’s site, I’m probably there to download a copy of the menu, not read what people think about that restaurant — there’s Yelp for that. If I’m looking for what people think about a retail store or brand or whatever, I know there are plenty of other places online to find that information. I just don’t see much of a need for it, unless maybe for higher education institutions – I can see how that might be useful for a kid scouting colleges, but even still, there are already places to go online for that kind of information.