This week I've gone through and I've check out Google's Sidewiki (promo video bellow).

I have to say that I am quite intrigued by this functionality given that people can contribute information to any website they want. Of course the big question is why would people want to provide content for other people's website. I know that some websites do foster communities through their commenting systems. Site regulars log in (as is the case with the brazen careerist network), and leave comments, and add value to a particular site, but the sidewiki seems to duplicate information. For example many sites would talk about the particular act that was highlighted on the demo video. Presumably this information on your site's sidewiki would just be connected to your site, and not aggregated out the rest of the web to other sites that use that same wording, so why put the effort in?

I suppose the authors to the website can provide added value to their content by linking to certain sites or keywords, but if they wanted to do that, wouldn't they just use links to begin with? I suppose for this technology I am taking a step back and watching how it rolls out and how people use it. It seems like a solution waiting for a problem from where I stand, but it will be interesting to see how people use it.