CoComment: Neat Idea, Nearly There

Comments are a big reason why blogs can be used as conversational media. However, as I've noted before, conversations that occur via blog comments can be difficult to follow.

One important aspect of tracking blog-based conversations is keeping track of the conversations that you've joined...

I've patched together a solution to do that using the social bookmarking tool Del.icio.us. I've created a tag there called "mycomments." Whenever I leave a comment on a blog or web-accessible forum, I bookmark that page in Del.icio.us and select "mycomments" as I tag that item. This makes it easy for me to find the conversations I've joined, although I have to then follow subsequent contributions to those conversations manually.

That works fine, but as Kami Huyse said, it is a bit "click happy." Definitely a usability drawback, I agree. Hey, it's a hack, after all.

Kami mentioned a new free service I hadn't heard of, CoComment. Basically, after you sign up for an account, you add their bookmarklet to your browser toolbar. Then, whenever you comment on a blog, you click that bookmarklet to register your comment with CoComment. This allows you to track and share your comments easily, and get notified when new comments are made to that posting.

...Which sounds great, but there's a problem. First of all, CoComment has a limited list of supported blog types (as of this writing, that includes Blogger, MSN Spaces, MySpaces, TypePad, Wordpress, Xanga, Flickr, Kaywa, and Mojira). They say they're working to add more types, which is good. However, the first two blogs I commented on and tried to track with CoComment turned out to be unsupported -- which was dismaying.

I understand the technical challenge CoComment's developers are facing, since different blogging platforms handle comments differently. And then there are services like Haloscan which complicate matters further.

I'm very attracted to the idea of a service that could consistently track my comments (regardless of the tools supporting the blog where I'm commenting), and that could consistently alert me to new contributions to those conversations. So I hope CoComments keeps developing well, and I'll poke into it from time to time.

But for now, I'll keep using my clunky del.icio.us hack, since it is reliable and it meshes well with other things I want to accomplish.

I'm sure I'll have more to say about CoComments later. For now, what has your experience been with this service? Comment below.

Comments

[Denise]

My experience with CoComment? Ummm problematic? The first problem is my own - I can't remember to use it! Just like your delicious hack, which I thought was pretty good, I can never remember to delicious! This is my own fault, not CoComment's fault. I have to somehow train myself to do it. And I'm beginning to think I am untrainable - old dog and all that?

Next, the first three blogs I tried to use the service with - no luck. Blogger users with popup comment boxes (Nancy White was my first attempt and she changed her settings so it works on her blog now) and Haloscan popup. Drupal, for Blogher comments - no luck. etc...

Then there have been a couple of times when I've tried to use the link on my blog's side bar to get to my comments and I haven't been able to load the comment page. It's only happened twice that I can think of and what looks like a site burp hwas been resolved pretty quickly and I was able to access the page.

Overall - great idea, not a bad user experience (when the user can remember to experience it!) and well worth the thirty seconds it took to register and grab the bookmarklet.

:-)

[Kent Newsome]

My current commenting system sounds similar to yours. The good part is that it works on all blogs.

I have also tried coComment, and my results have been generally positive. Here is a summary of my old and new comment approaches.

http://www.newsome.org/2006/02/cocomment-comment-tracking.shtml

Mathew Ingram has a great implementation of coComments on the right side of his blog.

I'm doing both approaches at the moment, but once coComment works with more platforms, I'll probably switch to it completely.

[Dave Lee]

While I too ran into a problem in my first attempt to use coComment with a Plone site, I have to say that I'm thrilled with coComment. Why blame coComment for reflecting the nature of the blogosphere, which is chaotic, unruly, and as individualistic as any technology humankind has ever created. We can't have our cake (the individualistic blogsphere) and east it (a simple standard by which it can be organized easily), too. While we continue to dream of such a tool, I'll thankfully take coComment's solution for now.

[Kami Huyse]

I have been using cocomment for a few weeks now, and it has three major drawbacks (from my perspective):

1. You can't save your comments from popup boxes, with the relative populatriy of Haloscan on Blogger blogs, this is a major issue. This issue is being addressed in the coComment forum, so hopefully these will eventually be supported, such as with the right click for del.icio.us

2. The coComment box I added to my site is causing several problems. It hangs up my blog and may also be affecting some of my stats on PubSub, for example. I stripped it out today, but hope I can put it back soon becuase it keeps track of the conversation in a more public forum.

3. It doesn't support all blogging platforms, but it gets the most popular.

I do have a solution for those that forget to start the bookmarklet, but you have to be a user of the Firefox browser. You can install a plugin (developed by a coComment user) that automatically starts the bookmarklet when it detects a comment form. Follow this link to find out how to do it:

http://www.cocomment.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=26

Like Amy, I still use a comments tag at del.icio.us to track my comments. But this shows some promise for the future. Remember, it is still in Beta land.