Kutano, a browser-based Twitter client that also aggregates comments on Twitter about the website a user is currently visiting, just launched the first client for Google’s Sidewiki project. Sidiwiki allows users who have a special version of the Google Toolbar installed to annotate any web page and comment on any blog post. These comments, however, are normally only visible to users who also use Google’s toolbar, but Google also allows third parties to access this data. Kutano is the first company to make use of the Sidewiki API to aggregate these comments and annotations.
At its core, Kutano is one of many browser-based Twitter clients that live in a sidebar. What sets Kutano apart, besides being a pretty capable Twitter client, is that it aggregates and displays Twitter posts about the site you are currently visiting. Now, Kutano can also tap into the pool of Sidewiki comments as well.
It’s nice to see that Kutano has opened up another avenue to access comments on Sidewiki. At the same time, though, we will still have to wait and see if Sidewiki turns out to be a success. Google would probably love to be able to pull in more comments through its system and be able to analyze these to improve its search engine.
For now, though, Sidewiki’s audience is limited and given that most Internet users already have a multitude of ways to express their opinion about a website (comments, Twitter, Facebook, FriendFeed, microblogs, etc.), it’s hard to imagine that Sidewiki will really catch on with users.
