I am not a big fan of Web annotation services that let people add their own virtual Sticky Notes or comments to Web pages for others to see. But Web annotation is back with the launch today of Google’s Sidewiki. To be honest, I don’t have high hopes for Sidewiki. Marking up the Web has limited appeal to the average consumer.
A better approach, if you are not Google, is to make Web annotation an enterprise product and go after a specific industry that will actually value (and pay) for it. Boston-based WebNotes is doing just that by shifting its focus from consumers to professionals. Today, it launched WebNotes PR, which takes its basic Web annotation technology and turns it into a press clip service for public relations firms.
One thing PR firms do is keep track of all press and blog mentions of their clients and deliver these clips on a daily or weekly basis. These clip files used to come in the form of Xeroxed articles from newspapers, magazines, and other print publications,with the name of the client company highlighted every time it was mentioned. Some companies still get these dead-tree clip files, but for the most part they’ve been replaced by daily emails with links and other digital descendants of the original.
WebNotes PR lets someone at a PR agency highlight articles and blog posts online, add sticky notes, and pull excerpts into digital reports with links back to the highlighted versions. These reports can be sent out as emails or PDFs. The articles can be organized into folders. It supports keyword searches via Google News, Google Blog Search, Technorati, or Twitter, and these searches can be saved as an RSS feed. Any RSS feed from any publication can be added as well.
The highlighting and collecting are done via a browser toolbar or bookmarklet, and the service costs $300/user/year or $35/user/month. Any information source that can be accessed over the Web can be annotated (although if it is a password-protected service, the viewer must also have access). Here is an example of a what a highlighted version of a TechCrunch page looks like—you can drag the note around, but it is read-only. I personally have no interest in marking up Web pages for the random public, but if it was my job to mark it up for specific clients, this is the way I’d do it.
Now this is HOT! I will start using this, very usefull for or R&D.
If only e could annotate and correct comments on TC lol.
I’ve been using WebNotes basic version for the last couple of weeks now. Super helpful, really easy to navigate, and the WebNotes team is ultra-responsive to concerns and questions.
Definitely a useful service!
I have been using webNotes for a long time now. I was one of the early adopters, as a beta tester. The service is really nice, mostly if you are at school doing work on the computer.
As a PR pro I’m not sure this will eclipse agency’s existing systems for collating and marking up newsclips.
I like it — but the value add does not seem to be “must-have” enough to have this be a really big seller.
For $35/user monthly, I’m not sure I’m seeing the full value – compared to, say, a free Diigo account(s) with highlighting, annotations, public/private bookmarks, tagging, and sharing with groups of other users, including urls to the annotated page…?
Great question! The real value in WebNotes isn’t necessarily the ability to highlight, but rather the ability to clip this text and automatically include it in a coverage report. This report is fully customizable with your firms logo, and general look and feel.
Lastly, WebNotes PR includes full RSS support so that you can monitor various feeds for content. This allows us to do some very cool things like media monitoring via Google News, twitter, etc.
It’s these two features that are the real time savers…annotations just provide a great method for capturing that content!
Ah, got it… sounds like Webnotes PR rolls about three or four products/services into one. Yes, I can see how that could be a timesaver! Thanks for the clarification!
Erick, what does this mean for DotSpots?
Leave it to MIT Gads
This is amazing, easy to understand and easy to use for millions of students across the globe. Easily 50% time savings.
Good Luck
I’ve looked into several of these, and I have to say that I like Reframe It best. http://reframeit.com It offers all the services – for free, too – and has a nice interface. I also like that it doesn’t cover any of the actual site content, because it opens in a frame at the right of the page. Pretty sweet. I will keep using it since I haven’t found anything I like better (not even the new Google one).
Seems like a smart move. We also started with web annotation (http://a.nnotate.com) for consumers but not many people want to share notes on web pages, and even fewer want to pay for it. Notes on private documents is is more appealing, but as alex says the real value is in the stuff that goes around it, not the annotation capability on its own.
Interesting find! Google Sidewiki refuses to install on the Chrome and asks for Firefox!
Sure it’s a better approach . . . if by that you mean it can be monetized easily.
What Google is doing is driving a currently-fragmented market to themselves. It’s all part of their plan to control . . . as much as they can.
It there any reason FOR this kind of application just being “out there”? No of course not. It’s silly and useless, just like Facebook, Twitter, and all blogging software! Oh, wait.
I don’t like that Google is editing what goes in there, but saying that it’s not useful . . . dude, what YOU do isn’t ‘useful’, and yet someone pays you to do it!
Jeff Yablon
President & CEO
Answer Guy and Virtual VIP Computer Care, Business Coaching and Virtual Assistant Services
This is the stupidest idea since somebody gave a gangbanger a can of spray paint. Am I the only website owner who does not welcome any goon coming out of the primordial ooze to deface my website? I DON’T WELCOME YOUR IDIOT COMMENTS, GOOD OR BAD. It’s my damn site, and I hate Google for doing this. I will never use their search engine again.
A nice encapsulation Erik, as always. In case you would like to see where this “Earth shaking” idea came from http://www.pami...vs-diigo/21787/
Just say thanks Ryan
Sorry to link up on that Eric, but we believe in full transparency and as anyone would, just due when it applies. The problem with so many early stage startups is that they do not build based on an end product, but engineer along the way.
Always,
Phil