Hat tip to Jeremiah Owyang for presenting this last weekend at Blogworld 2009; thank you.

During my time at HP, I remember several discussions about launching a printer blog to engage with consumers. This didn’t go over well with some because at that time, HP was struggling with giving up control of brand messages. Since then, they have done an extremely good job embracing social media and have launched some really cool and innovative programs.

We all know that many brands still struggle with this concept of giving up some control of the brand; and are scared to death about allowing comments on their blogs/communities in fear of negative comments.

Problem solved, or unsolved depending on how you look at it.  Welcome Google Sidewiki!

Google Sidewiki allows anyone to leave a comment on any webpage out on the social web. It does require users to download a plugin and comments are stored to the left of a web page using an iframe. Here is a screen shot of Apple’s website; notice the comment from me on the upper left. Google also allows users to share the comment via Twitter, Facebook, email, a bookmark; and the comment will also show up on the user’s Google profile. Google Sidewiki is new and but widespread adoption of this product is probably just right around the corner.

Here is a screen shot of the Nationwide Insurance web site. Notice the comment with the green background. This is because Nationwide has claimed their webpage and have added some relevant content for sidewiki users. Any brand can claim their webpage and whatever they decide to write will be at the top of the wiki. Until then, anything goes; with one caveat. Google Sidewiki also allows users to vote up/down a comment based on how helpful the comment was to the readers.

Google Sidewiki should not be perceived as a threat to brands. It really is just another opportunity for brands to engage on the social web. Something else to consider which I just thought of is how these conversations will manipulate (or not) the search engine rankings for web sites; AND whether or not these comments will ever get indexed and start appearing in the results. Uh oh.