I Want This Feature

I was leaving a comment on the most excellent Dead 2.0 blog this morning and came across this cool feature.

So often I leave a comment on a blog but forget about it. And there's probably a bunch of responses to my comment that I never see. Cocomment sort of solves this problem but they don't provide email alerts to the follow up comments.

I asked the Skeptic where he got that feature. I want it.

Comments (20) | Posted September 5, 2006 in Venture Capital and Technology

Comments

Sorry Fred, it's a Wordpress plugin. You're on TypePad...

And, you're right, it should be a requirement for every blog. Keeping up with the conversation is pretty cumbersome without it :)

Posted by: Jeremy Wright | Sep 5, 2006 8:48:53 AM

It is a Wordpress feature.

Posted by: COD | Sep 5, 2006 8:48:58 AM

Hi Fred,

I have been using cocomment.com for some time now to track and keep up with site comments. Once you install the FF extension you can simply forget about it and comment around the web. It automatically adds a feature to every compatible blogging system and lets you tag them for later right in the comments post - like this comment I am tagging "VC" below this box.

Sometimes I forget to login for awhile - but all the comments are stored and you can easily track conversations, which are then collapsable like in gmail.

Let me know your thoughts..

Posted by: Eric | Sep 5, 2006 9:50:55 AM

You can also subscribe via an RSS feed to cocomment, so for instance I use bloglines, and when new comments arrive, I get a note.

Posted by: mel starrs | Sep 5, 2006 10:21:10 AM

I use cocomment, but many of my readers don’t and I want to offer them an easy solution that works right off my blog

fred

Posted by: fred | Sep 5, 2006 10:22:55 AM

The MT equivalent is MT-Notifier

http://www.everitz.com/sol/mt-notifier/index.html

Posted by: MacStansbury | Sep 5, 2006 11:15:52 AM

Hi Fred

If comments are RSS enabled, you can use ZapTXT (www.zaptxt.com) to monitor the feed and receive alerts via email, IM or SMS.

Oh, and you can filter comments monitoring for specific keywords only as well.

Posted by: Sameer Patel | Sep 5, 2006 11:19:11 AM

I haven't tried this out yet (actually, I'm going to try it out on this blog post) but I just found this on digg: www.commentful.com

It doesn't have email or an rss feed, you tell it which pages you comment on and it tracks it for you.

Posted by: Bill Erickson | Sep 5, 2006 12:40:15 PM

Try co.mments:
http://co.mments.com

You can subscribe to e-mail alerts on new comments. They even thread nicely in your e-mail client.

Posted by: Assaf | Sep 5, 2006 12:56:36 PM

The big question really is, why doesn't cocomment merge w/MyBlogLog. These two services were made to work together and signing up to one would get you the other. Right now MyBlogLog is missing the true community piece which has to do w/interactions, and that can be solved w/a service like cocomment which keeps you abreast of the conversation on blogs you follow. Somehow it doesn't feel like more e-mail would be the most desirable way to keep up w/distributed conversations, but a centralized solution like cocomment is a way out of that. (Disclaimer: I do not work for or have invested in cocomment or MyBlogLog, just like both services and wish they'd come together.)

Posted by: P-Air | Sep 5, 2006 1:47:53 PM

Fred - Jeremy is right (and Wright. haha!) - it's a WordPress plugin, and he gets full kudos for pointing me to it!

Can the three folks here who WORK for comment-tracking companies at LEAST fess up to say they work there? It's so pathetic to read the "I hear this is a cool technology, I found it on Google the other day and it works super!" posts. It isn't really that hard to just say "Hi, I work for XXX company, and we make exactly the product you are looking for, here's the link."

-s

ps - thanks again, Mr. Wright (this is killin me, it's too easy)

Posted by: Skeptic | Sep 5, 2006 6:19:27 PM

Another satisfied cocomment user here...

I only recently discovered your blog and LOVE the music rec's as well as the smart ideas/writing.

Posted by: Tom Guarriello | Sep 5, 2006 10:43:33 PM

has anyone seen a plugin like this for Movable Type?

Posted by: andy beach | Sep 6, 2006 11:15:51 AM

oops - never mind - found it buried further up the field!

thanks macstansbury!

Posted by: andy beach | Sep 6, 2006 11:17:58 AM

Fred can you in some future post or update let us know what you choose in the end ? Cheers

Posted by: Fred Destin | Sep 6, 2006 3:22:33 PM

Does anyone have any comments about the difference between http://commentful.com and http://co.mments.com/ ?

I've been straddling the two services and would like to just pick one and go with it.

Posted by: evbart | Sep 7, 2006 9:45:14 AM

I haven't used co.comments but I've been using commentful for the past few days and it's working great (since I figured out how to integrate it with flock). After you download the firefox/flock plugin, there's a little circle in the bottom corner that turns green when there's new comments on a post you're monitoring (clicking it will go to commentful). You can also right click on any page online and in the contextual menu is "Add to Commentful."

Before I found the flock plugin I didn't think i'd remember to go to the site to check for updates. The little circle made it worthwhile.

Posted by: Bill Erickson | Sep 7, 2006 10:09:47 AM

Yeah, the little yellow circle is quite nice. Wish more services used smart ambient type UI cues to notify you of things.

I don't understand why they limit the amount of time that you can monitor a comments section. Sometimes relevant comments come up more than 30 days later.

A VC

Musings of a VC in NYC