Google recently introduced their new tool, Google SideWiki to create an annotated web browsing experience for any user willing to install the Google toolbar in their browser.  Operators of brand websites are no doubt going to be frustrated by the idea of user-generated content outside their control surrounding the user experience of their website.  However, there could be interesting opportunities here for marketers and tremendous advances for the consumer if the SideWiki adoption rate takes off.

For marketers, there may be interesting ways to engage your website audience in the effort to make your website more useful to other users:

• What if you post a new product and ask your users to sidewiki about it?
• What if you represent a cause and your users can sidewiki additional information that adds color to your campaign?
• What if you have an ecommerce site and users can sidewiki product recommendations or related products?
• What if you are a content hub and users can sidewiki links to your content on sites that relate to you thus creating new viral sources of traffic?

For consumers the immediate benefits are informational but the ultimate benefits could come if/when sidewiki goes social.  What if there comes a day when sidewiki uses Facebook Connect so that you can see sidewiki comments by your friends.  Everywhere you go on the web you will be surrounded by information generated by your own trusted network.  This is another step in the direction of what Charlene Li, the author of “Groundswell”, hints at when she says, “In the future, the social web will be in the air all around us.”

Right now the only way you can get the sidewiki app is by installing the toolbar. I think that one of the keys to rapid user adoption of sidewiki will be to un-marry the application from the Google toolbar.  There are already too many browser add-ons and many people choose not to add yet another row of buttons to their browser in favor of keeping their viewing area uncluttered.  If Google allows sidewiki to become a stand-alone free download that users can turn on and off as they choose I think the adoption rate will be dramatic.  What ideas do you have as to how you will use the sidewiki?