This morning, Google introduced a feature called SideWiki for Google Toolbar users that lets people add comments and annotations to Web sites. This is not a new approach, and it has been tried with varying lacks of success in the past, as most people without an agenda don't want to spend time marking up third party Web pages. But as predictable as rain, we again see people railing that there is potential for this service to take even more control away from bloggers and site administrators in terms of how their content is positioned, or where the conversations should take place.

Led by Jeff Jarvis, who simply said "Danger" and echoed by others, including Steven Hodson of the Inquisitr, who called it "a bad idea - very bad", the same stories I thought we had beaten into the ground almost 18 months ago in the Shyftr debacle are coming back - even after more than a year of a greater level of distributed conversations, as comments are now strewn all over the Web - not centralized on the originating blog.

I don't see why this type of interaction couldn't be fun and useful along with all the other ways of conversing and commenting. I don't think we've experienced the death of any conversation form thru the introduction of any of the new methods. I think we can use all the forms. With respect to Jeff Jarvis, who I've always found insightful, I'll listen closely to his concerns, but at this point, I'm like, "why not?"