Solo Technology

Got this IM’d to me earlier today: Google Co-op. I have to be honest and say that I’d not heard of it yet. I guess I missed some announcements (is it relatively new?). Here’s the blurb:

Google Co-op is about sharing expertise. You can contribute your expertise and benefit when others do the same. Help other users find information more easily by creating “subscribed links” for your services and labeling webpages around the topics you know best.

So at first glance, I’m thinking it is along the lines of either Yahoo! Answers or Ask. But no, not really. I’m not sure how to classify it. I see that Autos is one of the topics in development, so I click on that. That takes me to the Autos page where I’m greated with this text:

Welcome to the Google Co-op page for the autos topic. You can help improve search around this topic by contributing your expertise.

The labels for this topic — both those in use and those in development — are listed below. You’re encouraged to annotate useful and reliable webpages in this topic using these labels. (Click a label to get its definition.) You can also use the search box below to test out the current version of this topic.

Join in the conversation about this topic at its discussion group.

Followed by this:

Ok, it becomes to becomes a bit clearer.  And I also realized that annotating useful or relevant webpages with the appropriate labels looks tedious and not fun.  At which point (I kid you not) I rolled my eyes, admitted a bit of boredom and moved on to the next interesting thing on my list.

I dunno.  Maybe I’m missing the point here — but initial impression is a big ol’ shoulder shrug.

One Response to “So what’s a Google Co-op?”

1. Claude Gelinas on May 24th, 2006 7:53 am
   

   In my opinion, Google Co-op is an initiative inspired by the latest wave of online social networking, a closed network, if you will.

   By letting users help their fellow users identify quality content (through bookmarks), there’s a good chance the relevancy of “regular” Google searches will be better, much better if the Google Co-op subscriptions you cummulate are with true experts in their respective fields… assuming they keep their “bookmarks” updated, over time.

   The fact the interface is somewhat complicated, even for seasoned web user might be intentional since this service is still in Beta. Ideally, this service should automatically translate XML feeds internally when “normal” HTML feeds are submitted.

   On the upside, there’s a lot of information dedicated to “developers” so this means over time, we should see plug-ins for all major blog scripts. This should help expand the variety of “bookmarks” by leaps and bounds… kind of like a giant “digg” or “technorati”, I guess.

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