You may soon discover your Web site really sucks.
Third Voice, a new browser utility, enables users to publicly annotate the face of any Web page. That allows a page's audience to say what they want about anything they see online.
The radical communications tool has already earned an army of enemies.
See also: Readers Speak with Third Voice- - - - - -
"Our goal is to stop this software from being distributed until they can redesign it so [that] you have to ask permission from a Web site before you can post to it," said Teddy Pastras, a Web designer in Sonoma County, California, who hosts her own site on page design.
Pastras is also an active member of Say No to TV, a spontaneous group of Web-site hosts that is fighting Third Voice to alter or stop distributing the software.
The group rushed into action -- to a current force of at least 400 concerned Web hosts -- after Third Voice was launched on 17 May.
The free browser utility "snaps onto" the side of a Web browser window, inviting users to post their views on news, products, and politics.
The comments look and feel like Post-It notes stuck onto a Web page. If posted as public notes (private notes are also an option), comments can be seen -- amid highlighted areas of text and footnotes -- by any other user that has installed Third Voice. Readers can comment on each other's postings, leading to what Third Voice calls "inline discussions."
Pastras and her cohorts consider them "inline violations."
"The notes can be hyperlinked," said Pastra. "We have a screenshot of a note attached to the AOL site that was hyperlinked to a pornographic site."
The postings are rife with familiar forum topics comparable to those on Usenet newsgroups. "Hands-on personal attention/especially if you are an intern," reads a note posted at the official White House site. "This is a great site. Hillary rocks!" reads another. At the CNN site: "Milloivige sucks big d**s!"
Not all of them are random flames and spam, however. Apparently responding to a story on China, one Third Voice user wrote, "This is what I, an average American, have felt all along.... Good luck to you and your people," wrote poster "Obiwan."
On Tuesday, for example, notes on AOL's directory site contained links to a porn site.
"If somebody attached such a note to my site and a visitor is running Third Voice, they will see that note," Pastras said. "Because most general surfers are ignorant, they will think I'm supporting pornography."
She said that all 200 pages of her site are being "infected" daily by notes -- some constructive, some not.
Pastras and Say No to TV say the ability to affix notes is an invasion of privacy and violation of copyright law, which could be grounds for future legal action against Third Voice by the group.
