The commentary on Google Sidewiki continues to roll in:

* Adam Cohen has a nice commentary for Ad Age: “Big pharma and Google Sidewiki: a sink or swim situation?” Pharmaceutical companies are rightly concerned that Sidewiki comments on their own sites may land them in regulatory hot water.

* I also spoke with Social Media Explorer principal Jason Falls and Altimeter Group partner Jeremiah Owyang about Sidewiki at last week’s BlogWorld & New Media Expo. Here are their takes:

Jason Falls on Google Sidewiki’s impact on brands and marketers

Jeremiah Owyang on the ‘disruptive’ nature of Sidewiki

(Disclosure: My employer, LiveWorld, is a consulting client of Jeremiah’s.)

RSS readers: You may need to click through to the original blog post to see the videos.

Much ado about … ?

For all the buzz about Sidewiki, the real impact will only be felt if more users start to adopt it. Jeremiah says as much in the video above. And at least until Google Chrome incorporates the tool into its browser, using Sidewiki will always require a manual download/update of the Google Toolbar (not necessarily difficult, but still a barrier to entry).

Plus, the experience of using Sidewiki itself will need to become something beyond just “digital grafiti.” We’re not quite there yet–but I suspect this is a long march we’re headed for.

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