June 7, 1999
Web site sticky notes: digital democracy or online graffiti?
By Bob O'Donnell
I don't know if there's an Internet equivalent to Moore's Law, but if there were one,
we'd have to change the rate at which technology doubles in capability from 18 months to
something like 6 months or so. I don't mean the actual speed of the Internet, of course --
if anything, that's an inverse of Moore's Law, perhaps halving its performance every so
often. Rather, I am referring to the innovations that drive how we use and interact with
the Web. New ideas and concepts here continue to come at a breakneck pace.
Given that, it shouldn't be surprising that some Web-based ideas really hit you like a
ton of bricks, but some still do. The one that caught me off guard recently was the new
browser plug-in called Third Voice from the similarly named Third
Voice.com, www.thirdvoice.com. What Third Voice lets you do is
comment on existing Web sites or particular portions of Web sites by placing the digital
equivalent of publicly viewable "sticky" notes anywhere on any site you want.
Well, let's make that "semi-publicly" viewable because you have to download and
install the freely available beta of Third Voice both to see as well as create your own
Web site sticky notes. (By the way, Third Voice isn't the first company to offer this type
of "on-site" commentary, but it is the most recent.)
What Third Voice -- which currently supports only Microsoft's Internet Explorer 4.0,
but which will also support IE 5.0 and Communicator/Navigator 4.0 and later when the final
version ships -- does is copies all its users' comments on its own server. Then, when a
Third Voice user visits any particular site or page, the plug-in checks the Third Voice
comment server and embeds small marks into the page where other user comments have been
made and displays the combined results in your browser window. What the user essentially
sees, then, is a Web site with notes posted by visitors on it, or at least marks where
sticky notes can be viewed by double-clicking on them.
As you can probably guess, this raises an enormous number of really important issues as
well as a lot of very serious red flags (at least in my book). Third Voice claims that the
goal of its program is to encourage interaction on Web sites and let site viewers provide
feedback to site designers. In addition, the company's press release states that
"Third Voice promotes equal rights of expression on the Web for readers and authors
alike." Now, if it were so difficult to be a Web author, I might understand this, but
given the ease with which anyone can be a site creator, I have problem with this way of
thinking. What I think Third Voice is doing is interfering with a Web site's content,
which is bound to land the company in legal hot water.
Even worse, I'm afraid the abuse potential for this type of product is enormous. I
certainly don't want to discourage freedom of expression, but as someone who has worked
long and hard at building my own site, I
would hate to see it covered with the equivalent of what I view as digital graffiti. Plus,
given the veil of anonymity that so many people shroud themselves behind when they go
online, I think the number of slanderous, libelous, or just plain rude comments created by
this product will, unfortunately, far outnumber the genuinely helpful critiques. Most
well-designed sites provide an easy way to give direct feedback to the site developer or
Web master, and that, to me, seems like a much better way to encourage interaction between
a site's viewers and its creators.
Now, as much as I dislike the idea of the product, I have to admit that it's pretty
darn clever. After all, virtually everyone who has their own Web site is going to want to
download and install the software, just to see what anyone else has to say about their
site. That, in turn, will temporarily, at least, support the company's advertising-based
business model by building up a large potential audience. In the long run, however, I
think the potential legal issues it raises will be its downfall.
I'm certainly all for generating healthy online discussions and encouraging interaction
between site developers and site users, but when a product like Third Voice interjects
itself in between the site's point of origin and the viewer's screen, I think the
interaction has gone too far.
©
Copyright 1999, by InfoWorld Publishing Corp., a
subsidiary of IDG Communications, Inc. Reprinted from InfoWorld,
155 Bovet Road, San Mateo, CA 94402. Further reproduction is
prohibited.
