When DotSpots first demo’d live on stage at TechCrunch50 last year (see their presentation here), Google VP Marissa Mayer said of the product: “It’s a really beautiful idea and I really like anything that pushes the Web forward in that way.”
The service lets users annotate any part of a web page, from a single quote to the entire page, leave a comment and socialize it with friends. It’s like commenting on just a paragraph from a story or page instead of the whole thing, and users can add rich media to their comments as well. From our post on their demo:
DotSpots is an annotation platform that allows users to add text or video comments to any piece of text on the web. Dotspots searches through millions of online news articles, indexing paragraphs of text and using an algorithm to determine when certain passages appear multiple times across different sites.
User comments are presented in each post as unintrusive (but readily visible) bubbles, which expand to reveal the text or video that has been added. Because the site has indexed content across the web, it can append these comments to any article reprints, such as an AP article that has been syndicated across thousands of publications.
There is also an overview video below – users can access the service via a browser plugin, and soon you’ll see publishers implement it directly on their sites. Thousands of people have been waiting a year to get in and use the service, but today TechCrunch readers can jump to the front of the line. The first 500 people to sign up at this link should get in immediately. And if you’re too late, don’t worry. The service should launch publicly soon.
Only for Firefox
Chrome support is coming next, as well as an includable script for publisher sites.
Matt [cofounder, DotSpots]
Doesn’t seem easier than Snipd
Made my first dot
http://dotspots...hy?context=true
http://dotspots...hy?context=true
I think there should be a way to view this content without having to sign up for dotspot. And not just in context. But out of context too.
I think DotSpots could actually be an impromptu blogging tool (instead of reviewing a site on my blog or twitter page) I review it in place… I like that…
@Vaibhav You already can view dots out of context without having to sign up.
I am going to go see how to do that. Thanks
Kind of like Snipd, but leaves little droppings or dots all over the web (with the plugin).
Been done before — 3rd Voice et al. Didn’t like it then, don’t care for it now.
Third Voice indeed:
http://www.wire...s/2001/04/42803
I remember kicking the tires on a competitor’s service during the dotcom era, but can’t remember their name. Anyone remember the other ones?
Isn’t this similar to Diigo (http://www.diigo.com)?
I’m confused, isn’t the point of TechCrunch50 to be a launch pad for companies? Companies a YEAR away from market launch are selected?
That aside, I love annotation products and thus far this one seems very cool.
I was skeptical, but I have to admit that this service has actually proved to be mildly entertaining so far…
I really don’t care to sign up, but to someone who has, so it looks like you have to view the site as an iframe ? Also I wonder what a digg or reddit comments page would like, if everyone had these dots on the page, I bet they would have the same issue of organizing comments as both these sites.
iframe? You mean you want to reveal that you’re kind of a html hack? c’mon iframes are so… 1999.
No, it uses a plugin in firefox to render the annotation tool. The “annotation” clip renders something more like a lightbox and looks like it does some sort of pass-through the dotspots server based on your client so only you and people that you “share” your dots with see the annotation.
As others have said, web annotation has been done before but this seems a little more cleverly designed and occupies a logical use that extends what people sharing links in facebook and twitter might really want to do.
There’s a lot of potential here, but then again, same can be said for a lot of products. I’ll be watching this one.
I thought a requirement for TC50, is that you had to launch it there. Is this really launching a year after presenting?
We did launch a very limited private beta last year… took the feedback and improved the product for this year… hope you like it… but, it’s still early days, so please keep the feedback coming in…
I registered, and after viewing the video tutorial, have to conclude that the ‘Dots’ seems to be similar to Google Waves ‘Wavelets’(?).
Interesting to see how both will evolve and which will have the bigger takeup.
Jayen,
We did a demo a few months ago at a Wave hackathon where we embedded a Google Wave inside a dot and attached that to a news article, allowing real-time collaboration on a publisher’s site:
http://www.flic...N00/3577541130/
Matt [cofounder, DotSpots]
Dots are in many ways more simplistic than Waves… but they have been designed with a specific purpose in mind: To help people distribute thoughts (that are longer than tweets / comments) directly into context of any local news article and have those spread to other relevant articles (and social media) automatically, where anyone who interacts with them can collaborate and improve them.
Our goal is to empower people to improve the news for other people by making it easy for anyone to connect relevant dots of information from around the real-time web into every news article…
Wave has much larger, more generic aspirations and applications… as such we are looking at their tech actively and may one day incorporate the wavelet framework into our dots.
makes me want those little frozen ice cream pellets
It is NO real big deal. Similar service “Third Voice” appeared 8 years ago.
I loved Third Voice and thought it was a very big deal… just way ahead of it’s time.
Best,
Farhad (co-founder DotSpots)
I worked at Third Voice back in the day and yes, this very similar. Third Voice was way ahead of it’s time and all webmaster/property owners continually criticized it’s product. The webmasters didn’t want people to annotate their sites at all, even if it was for personal use.
Death came to Third Voice because the powers that be, just couldn’t figure out how to monetize it. Advertisting was the way to go, but having a very small subset of users of a website was not attractive.
There were other great ideas that were thought of during the period at Third Voice, but the money ran out….
It was a very fun company and cool technology to be a part of… The possibilities were truly endless, but the money was not…
Looks like a pretty cool feature but I don’t think most people would take the time to sign up for it when visiting your site/blog etc.
Might becoming king of annoying over time…
We will have a server side script for blogs / publishers so their viewers can see dots without signing up.
The extension is only for dot creators… and we don’t need a lot of them… just a few thousand great DotSpotters (connecting great user generated content from around the web) will make our service really useful on most important stories… All it takes is a few good dots to show people multiple angles on important stories.
That said: thanks for the input and please keep the feedback coming in.
Best,
Farhad.
***typo*** “kind of annoying”…
I loved Third Voice too, but unlike DotSpots it didn’t require websites to opt-in. That means that I’m unlikely to be able to carry on a conversation on the NY Times webpage, where it would be useful.
Also, all of that user-generated content is help by DotSpots, meaning that it can’t be re-used or searched.
if you have the plug-in the website doesn’t need to agree…
Like I said in my test dot, when / if everyone has this, webpages will become so cluttered with comments around the main article that everyone will end up shutting it off. I think there’s a reason comments at the bottom of the page.
There will be a quality threshold, as well as user and publisher settings to control what dots get displayed. The purpose of a dot is to evolve over time, which is significantly different than one line comments at the bottom of a page.
Now this is damn good and i could have fun with it. Thanks for the beta
Hi, I would like an invite, if you have any left. Thanks.
Use the signup link (http://dotspots...join/TECHCRUNCH)
Seems like it could be a lot of fun, but I kinda agree with Curbob, there is a reason comments are at the bottom. Too much clutter! I like the name though, it is catchy and the ‘dot’ has a strong web connotation.
Glad you like the name
Page comments at the bottom of the article are great for general discussions/comments. In addition there is value in providing collaborative tools that allow Citizen Journalists, Bloggers, Editors and Users alike to engage in the mainstream News more directly. Dots lowest value is as an “inline comment” and their purpose is to connect in relevant ugc into the context of stories. Those are the dots that will be valuable and the “comment-like” dots will be voted down and out of sight.
This is mostly the same as Tucent (www.tucent.net) which launched a year ago…
Dont bet against The Farhad! I think this is super clean and better than using Twitter to send bit.ly etc messages about in many cases…if Twitter is a URL forwarding tool then maybe Dotspots can replace alot of that over time….and anyway 3rd Voice was damn cool—the web just wasnt ready.
As an investor, I wouldn’t touch this with a 10 foot pole until there is an IE plugin.
That’s fine for the people who choose to use it.
It may not be a new idea but it’s a valid idea. However, when it becomes available for sites to install server-side, it better have an easy off feature for readers. I’d rather read an article that isn’t messy.
Negatives:
– It clutters pages for readers.
– Readers have less incentive to use a publisher’s own comments system; a publisher loses out on more valuable unique content (search engine material).
– Publishers are more likely to want the integrity of their body of work to remain whole, not visibly altered.
– Likewise, it’s ripe for abuse. Since it’s in the article itself, moderation becomes even more important (a good Digg/karma system can only be so fast).
I’m not convinced that there are real incentives for sites to install it.
Competition:
This is sort of like the Dispute Finder Firefox extension by Intel Labs of Berkeley:
http://disputef...s.berkeley.edu/ Of course, Dispute Finder is more limited in scope.
Other than that, their biggest threat is someone creating an annotation service just like this but using Twitter/Facebook as the backbone for users instead. Though Twitter would have to vastly improve its features before developers can create smarter filters/threads/groups to not clutter up streams. Even more of a threat is Google Wave, perhaps.
Positives:
That said, this is ‘fresher’ at the moment and they’re pushing it earlier. It’ll still be useful for many users probably. Maybe it’ll even pick up traction and prove worthwhile. Someone’s bound to become the /main/ provider of public annotation, which has yet to happen. So good luck.
Newer, more in-depth look into DotSpots:
http://www.plok...-its-spots.html