Collaboration Archives - Page 19 of 20

The Third and Best Comment Tracking Tool

Posted on February 14, 2006 ·

(Updated)

This has been quite a week for all of us unhappy about missing the other half of the Conversation: in rapid succession three comment-tracking products were announced.

First came coComment with a spontaneous (?) yet well-executed viral campaign that spread around the Blogosphere like wildfire. Other than the “big names” supporting the launch, key to their overnight popularity was the fact that it really was the long-awaited first (so we thought) solution to a problem that’s been bugging so many of us. I do like coComment, it has a lot of bells and whistles, and potential to do more.

Then I received an email from Diego who had launched MyComments a few days earlier, but only on Spanish-speaking blogs. The original launch went pretty much unnoticed but when it got Scobleized, word got around fast …

Originally I favored coComment, since it places the “burden” of a click on me, the commenter, whereas MyComments is dependent on the blog owner implementing a plug-in. However, I did not realize that coComment still needs all other commenters to click their coCo-button, otherwise I get nothing… That said, I really don’t know which approach is better, both leaving me dependent on others

Third time’s the charm: today without much fanfare Robert announced co.mments, the third, and IMHO best solution. Simplest and best. No more dependency on plug-ins, other people clicking ..etc… it just tracks the thread and sends me RSS updates. I still need a bookmarklet to mark the comment threads I’d like to follow, but that’s OK with me, at least I can be selective with which threads I really want to follow.

(While I am writing this, the site went down .. .at this point only the author’s blog is available. I guess that’s what happens when your server capacity is not ready to be Scobleized… )

Update (2/14): What a coincidence; just as soon as I declared co.mments the winner, my coComment box disappeared… (Yes, I know, cheap shot, it’s just an error, but I couldn’t resist…)

Update (3/14): Now that TechCrunch profiled co.mments, perhaps they will receive due attention Talk about attention, here’s Steve Rubel.

Tags: Blogs, Blogging, Blogosphere, Conversation, Blog Comments, Comment Tracking, Conversational Index, Tracking, coComment, myComments, co.mments, co.mments.com

Filed Under: Blogging, Collaboration, Software ·

3Bubbles – a Bubble 2.0 Indicator?

Posted on February 11, 2006 ·

(Updated)

I’m not trying to be funny with the title. I think a pretty good indicator of being in Bubble 2.0 is when we see cute new applications that everyone likes yet very few use. 3Bubbles, announced by Stowe Boyd, featured at TechCrunch is a really neat idea: adding real time chat to blogs.

But how many blogs are there to support a lively chat? My guess is less than (the Technorati Top) 100.

When I wake up early morning (PST) the little flags on my MapStats view are all over Europe, Asia and Australia. Later the day as we wake up here most of my visitors are from the American continent. Blogs do for conversation what wikis do for collaboration: enable a dialogue between people who are far apart not just in terms of geography but in time, often in different time zones. Only hugely popular blogs will have the critical mass of readers coming together for a real time chat. My feeling is that even with enough participants around, chat is not an easy way to convey a coherent message. I’ll be happy to be proven wrong though.

That said, I’m sure it will work on TechCrunch – and a few others. Is the business model than to deliver ads to a handful (a few dozens?) of blogs?

Update (2/12):

Update 2. (2/13). TechCrunch reports 3Bubbles is (are?) open for a limited beta. Right now there are 16 chat participants… I’m sure some of them expressed their opinion, but I can’t see that, since they all are in the chat session instead of leaving comments. It looks to me that 3bubbles’ instant “achievement” is to reduce the conversation that used to span over days and different timezones to only the people that are present at the same time.

Tags: 3bubbles, bubble 2.0, conversation, blogs, blogging, wiki, collaboration, chat, blog chat

Filed Under: Blogging, Collaboration, Personal Productivity, Social Networking, Software ·

coComment or myComments?

Posted on February 8, 2006 ·

After repeatedly crying out for a solution, I was really happy to become a beta user for coComment. Little did I know that there were actually TWO comment tracking solutions announced almost the simultaneously.

The coComment launch was a masterpiece of viral marketing: all it took was a couple of A-list bloggers (Michael Arrington, Robert Scoble, Dave Winer, Om Malik, Steve Gillmor, Cory Doctorow, Richard MacManus, Stowe Boyd, and others) and a wildfire started. Of course it did not hurt that coComment addressed a real burning need. Or was it the 109–yr-old Cognac the Raclette and the jacuzzi? More on the launch by Don Dodge.

The other announcement, that of myComments, although it happened a few days earlier, went almost unnoticed. No wonder, Diego, the author announced it on his own not-so-widely read blog. A lesson to learn in marketing.

I have not had a chance to try myComments, so my initial comparison is based on what I read on his site, and some email information from Diego.

Both products essentially do the same: if I leave a comment on someone’s blog, I can receive an RSS feed of all subsequent comments – the full conversation. They have a fundamentally different approach getting there though:

CoComment requires a bookmarklet or a FireFox extension, and I have to click once to activate coCo before posting my message.

MyComments on the other hand requires a plug-in to be installed in the blog where I go to comment. If the plug-in is present, I don’t have to click anymore. At first glance this appears to be more convenient, since no extra step is required before posting the comment. There is a problem, however – this is a great concept once it is widely used, but how do we get to that scale? I want the results, but I can’t do anything about it, I am dependent on the host blog having the plug-in. We’ll have to see if this solution can take off – until then, it’s coCo-time.

Update (2/6): Here’s a comparison of the two services, and a comprehensive review of blog commenting in general.

Update 2 (2/16): Apparently there is a better solution, see here.

Tags: Blogs, Blogging, Blogosphere, Conversation, Blog Comments, Comment Tracking, Conversational Index, Tracking, coComment, myComments

Filed Under: Blogging, Collaboration, Software ·

coComment – Prelude to Virtual Blogs? The Genie is Out of the Bottle

Posted on February 5, 2006 ·

Despite some initial glitches (hey, it’s pre-beta ) I enjoy using coComment. It is HOT. Scoble announced it yesterday, then it quickly got profiled on TecCrunch, and people (including yours truly) were begging for invitattion codes to the closed beta, and now it’s all over Memeorandum, Megite, Tailrank .. you name it. (See more ref’s at the bottom).

Of course it did not hurt to have “brand names” like Scoble and TechCrunh jumpstart it, but coComment could not have possibly spread like this had it not met a very-very basic need. Until now, we’ve been missing half the conversation in the Blogosphere.

The missing half is comments left by bloggers (or non-bloggers) on other people’s blogs. As Stowe Boyd’s new Conversational Index sharply shows, the real vibrant blogs have far more comments than original posts by the blog author. From the commenters’ pint of view, assuming they are not all A-listers (they can’t be… with 26 million blogs around), well, many of them participate in the conversation mostly this way, not on their lesser-known blogs. In fact, there are hyper-active commenters who don’t even write their own blog.

Michael Parekh has proposed that these blogless bloggers should have their Virtual Blog:

“There are possibly several times more folks who COMMENT on blogs as those who MAINTAIN their own blogs. These are the “Lurkers” of old (remember the good old days of message boards?) who occasionally come out and say something when they really feel strongly about.

Imagine if every person who comments had a PRE-SET user name that worked on all blogs in the system. Then imagine is that user-name could be used, with the user’s permission of course, to construct a “virtual blog” for that user on the fly, listing their comments across various blogs, WITH the under-lying context. Voila…we’d have millions of new bloggers overnight with their own virtual blogs, WITHOUT them having to go through the EFFORT OF MAINTAINING A REGULAR BLOG AT ALL.”

Responding to Michael I pointed out that the the foundation for the preset username he proposes largely exists, in the form of Typekey by Typepad, Reader Accounts by Blogware… and whatever other authentication schemes the major platforms use.

Today there is another proposal on coComment’s forum about creating Virtual Blogs:

“Now, that’s interesting! Think about it. Czheng is an active “commenter” participating in conversations. Now, the Next Big Thing would be for coComment to have “virtual blogs” which are automatically created from the conversations they monitor. The more control they give the commenter, the more seamless the transition would be between commenting on other people’s blogs, and having those comments begin to populate your own blog automatically. Of course, you could then “tailor and edit” the content you’ve already (via commenting) put on your virtual blog….”

coComment-ers seem to have embraced the idea. They are probably overwhelmed with feedback / ideas for a while. Other contribute a lot more than ideas: Brian Benzinger not only provided a detailed review, but overnight he created a Greasemonkey script to automate the process.

The Genie is out of the bottle … there is no stopping now. This is a good day for bloggers.

Related post (just a sampling from the deluge):

I give up, the list if far from complete, check out Megite, it’s dominated by coCo
It’s a real CoCorush

Tags: Blogs, Blogging, Blogosphere, Conversation, Blog Comments, Comment Tracking, Conversational Index, Tracking, coComment

Filed Under: Blogging, Collaboration, Social Networking, Software, Startups ·

Tracking the COMPLETE CONVERSATION – Part 3

Posted on February 3, 2006 ·

(Updates at the bottom)

Stowe Boyd introduces the concept of the Conversational Index:

“…successful blogs — ones that were currently viable and vibrant, and those that were on a growth trajectory from their start — shared a common characteristic: The ratio between posts and comments+trackbacks (posts/comments+trackbacks) was less than one. Meaning that there was more conversation — as indicated by the number of comments and track backs offered by readers — than posting articles. I will call this the Conversation Index, just to put a handle on it.

Here’s the current picture for /Message, a CI of 80/102 = 0.784. “

I’m fully with him on this, the CI would be a really useful indicator of the interest level a blog enjoys – but we need to step further than just having another nice badge to be displayed on our blogs.

The underlying issue that myself and other, more esteemed bloggers pointed out numerous times (see links below) is that currently we really are losing track of half the conversation in the Blogosphere.

As Stowe points out, for truly vibrant blogs the CI will be <1, which means there are far more comments than blog posts (I am cheating a little, ignoring trackbacks). This will likely be the case for all the Technorati top 100 or even 500 bloggers – from their viewpoint most of the conversation happens on / around their own blog. However, for the the rest of us, the other 26 million (?) bloggers chances are the conversation really takes place outside our own blog, and I for one certainly can’t keep track of all comments I left on other blogs.

The current crop of tracking / linking services all have a top-down publisher-centric view, where everything revolves around a blog and its related posts, totally missing this other, “bottom-up” half of the conversation. So please, somebody give Stowe his badge , but we also badly need a way to show by subject matter an integrated view of all conversations where we are participating whether we started the thread or someone else.

References:

Update (1/3): TechCrunch just profiled another “conversation tracker”, Megite, which also got some praise at the Read/WriteWeb. OM is not too happy though…

Megite is Memeorandum-style, but covering more topics. Nice, but still top-down, blog-focused, i.e. “conversations” consist of linked blog-posts, excluding the world of comments.

Update to the Update (gee..) Megite apparently has special editions, there’ snow a Scobleized Megite …

Update 2 (1/3): Wow, this article got Megite-d

Update 3 (1/4): Wo-ho-ho, what a timing! Robert Scoble announced and TechCrunch just profiled CoComment, the first attempt at tracking blog comments. I’m looking forward to trying it … just need an invitation code.. ahhhh. Here’s CoComment’s blog.

Tags: Blogs, Blogging, Weblogs, Tags, Tagging, Tracking, Conversation, RSS, Feed, Technorati, Conversational Index

Filed Under: Blogging, Collaboration, Social Networking, Software ·

Tracking the COMPLETE CONVERSATION

Posted on December 23, 2005 ·

This is a two-month-old article republished on occasion of Steve Rubel’s post today: 2006 Trends Part I: Comment Search. Steve predicts we’ll see a solution soon. I certainly hope so. After all.. we’ve seen communication, PR, Marketing, Tech gurus identify this as a need – it’s an open call for all the programming wizards out there 🙂

Happy Holidays!

The original article:

There is an abundance of tagging / tracking / linking / stat’s tools to enhance the Blogosphere, but they are all one-directional, missing a major part of the “Conversation”.

Steve Rubel talks about RSS being a passive “receive medium”, and how RSS is one-way, feeding info to those who passively consume it – but there is no “active” feedback channel where a business / organization could subscribe to the feed of all those interested in their product, service, or simply those that expressed a particular interest.

I’ve been thinking about a similar problem, but specifically limited to why blogging is still an incomplete conversation. “ You’re linked to me, I’m linked to you. That’s a conversation.” – says Ethan at OnoTech. Well, almost. There is just the small issue of manageability.

If you’re a Technorati top 100 or even 500 blogger, most of the conversation happens around your own blog, in the form of comments and trackbacks from other blogs. However, for the the rest of us, the other 20 million bloggers, chances are the conversation really takes place outside our own blog, and I for one certainly can’t keep track of all comments I left on other blogs. An occasional Google search on my name reveals lots of these “half-conversations” where I left a comment, the blog owner or other readers responded, but I’ve never seen the response, since I forgot to go back and-re-read all those blog-post.

Jeff Clavier points out that Blogware, one of the lesser known platforms (which I happen to use) can send emails when comments are made on a post you have commented on but that is email, and that’s not great… what about the other platforms? The current crop of tracking / linking services all have a top-down publisher-centric view, everything revolves around a blog and related posts, totally missing this other, “bottom-up” half of the conversation. Don’t we all need something that shows an integrated view of all conversations where we are participating per subject matter (blog title), whether we started it or someone else?

Jeff in his post quoted above invites creative minds to come up with a solution, and so does Steve Rubel: “boy is that a business for someone”. At the recent TechCrunch BBQ I heard Dave Winer complain that he hasn’t seen a major breakthrough innovation around blogs for quite a while – I bet half the crowd at the event (200 techno-crazy minds) could create what we need here. C’mon guys, what are you waiting for?

Update (11/7) : Here’s a somewhat manual workaround. Still not quite the real thing 🙁

Update (11/9) Jeremy Zawodny discusses comment tracking – some of the comments on his post are also worth reading.

Updates (12/25):

Tags: Blogs, Blogging, Weblogs, Tags, Tagging, Tracking, Conversation, RSS, Feed, Technorati, TechCrunch,

Filed Under: Blogging, Collaboration, Social Networking ·

CourseCafe is Taking Off

Posted on December 6, 2005 ·

I just profiled a week ago. ( CourseCafe, “the Other FaceBook“) At the time they just went live with their first pilot at Pepperdine.
Apparently a wildfire started: they are now live at Drexel, Pepperdine, Rose Hulman, RPI, SJSU, Stanford, UC Davis.
Wow… Congrat’s! 🙂

Update (1/22): Here’s the new CourseCafe Blog.

Tags: CourseCafe, JustStudents, StudentVision, FaceBook, TheFaceBook, XuQa, Tags, Tagging, del.icio.us, delicious, Collaboration, Social Tagging, Knowledge Sharing, Vertical Search

Filed Under: Bay Area, Blogging, Business, Collaboration, Personal Productivity, SaaS, Social Networking, Software, Startups ·

The Third and Best Comment Tracking Tool

coComment or myComments?

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