What a difference (less than) two years make! Here I was complaining about losing half the conversation …. two months later three comment tracking services debuted: coComment , MyComments and co.mments. Of these three, coComment developed decent traction.
Fast forward a year or so, and we have an abundance of comment tracking / conversational tools: TechCrunch just announced Intense Debate:
…a souped-up blog commenting system that adds a lot of features for publishers and commenters alike. Installing the plug-in on your blog (WordPress, Blogger, and TypePad) adds threading, comment analytics, bulk comment moderation across all your blogs, user reputation, and comment aggregation.
TechCrunch mentions JS-Kit, SezWho, and Tangler as competitors. But on the very same day Fred Wilson announced another commenting system:
I am lending a new startup a hand by letting them showcase their new comment system on this blog.
I don’t know how much I am supposed to say about them, so I’ll stay silent on them for now.
Based on some similarities (at least at first glance) I thought it was Intense Debate skinned somewhat differently – but after all, there was a little logo leading to Disqus: another commenting/ conversation system.
Choices, choices … what’s a poor blogger to do? 
Update: I’ve met – online – Josh from Intense Debate and Daniel from Disqus. The dilemma still stands (hm, should I say I’m intensely debating which one to try ;-)) but in the meantime I’ve found this video on Daniel’s blog. It’s absolutely off-topic, and absolutely worth watching (till the very end, or you’ll miss the point):
Blog Tracking Services Compromise Online Bank Security?
Is this a real danger? What do you think?
Update (11/19): Several commenters here and on TechCrunch confirm what I thought myself: the warning likely refers to “tracking” products that offer a browser plug-in. In this case I was using FireFox with the BlogRovr plugin turned on. I know coComment offers a plugin, and whoever else does … well, Citibank considers it a security risk. Hm… food for thought.
Update #2: Wow, apparently this has been a well-documented problem for at least half a year, so Citi’s solution is to finally put up a warning message.