Cool Marketing Thoughts

These last few days there’s been a lot of buzz about tools to track your comments. A few tools have been launched in a very short time, and it seems those tracking tools are the long awaited solution a lot of bloggers were hoping for. In a few ways I agree that it might be useful to keep a list of the places where you’ve been actively participating in discussions or conversations. You can also list those comments on your blog with a plug, so your readers know where you’ve been commenting and about which topic. It might replace the ‘go read what I said here or there’ posts on some blogs, but in general I don’t think I’m going to use this. I’d rather blog about it and point to the specific post, so I can add some context.

Overall, when I comment on something it’s either so good or relevant I’ll blog it too, or so stupid it’s too ridiculous to post. I don’t need an archive to backtrack whatever I’ve said on someone else’s blog. It’s difficult enough to manage all the tools as it is. It would be really cool if Technorati or WordPress would integrate it in their user interface behind the scenes, like in the dashboard.
I don’t want to clutter my index much more than it already is. If integrated, it would be handy and it wouldn’t require more actions from my part. But for those people who are commentbloggers, or for those who want to be able to browse through the history of their own thoughts outside their blog, here are 3 good comment tracking tools.

1. coComment

• When you comment on a blog, coComment keeps a copy of your message on a special page – called “your conversations” – that allows you to quickly see your comment and where it was posted, with a link to the original site.
• You can display all the comments you make accross the blogosphere on your own blog. (sidebar action)
• What’s been added to a particular discussion in real time is sent to you in real time.

I don’t want to have my comments listed in the sidebar, I don’t like the idea they’re hosted ‘away’ from my blog. It’s like my comments feature in the previous design, Haloscan. I can’t control ‘my’ content.

2. MyComments

• Every time you post a comment in any blog that has the plugin installed, myComments alerts via RSS all the other conversation members.
• You only need to add the URL with your email to your feed reader.
• MyComments works with a plugin installed in your blog, by the time there are plugins for Wordpress and Textpattern, but there’s an API documented so anyone can create his own plugin.

I don’t like the fact it only tracks the comments in the blogs that have the plugin installed too. It’s too restrictive.

3. co.mments.com

• co.mments helps you stay on top of the conversation by keeping you updated of new comments. Just bookmark, track and follow.
  Drag & drop the bookmarklet to your bookmarks menu. This will create a new bookmark. To track new comments on the post you are viewing, click on that bookmark.
• Add an HTML or PHP snippet to the template that displays the blog post and its comments. When your readers click on the link, they will add your post to their tracking page.

It’s like del.icio.us for comments. This is the best thing out of three, but hey, if I press ctrl+d, I can bookmark the page I’m on too. And adding yet another piece of code to the template… nah. It should be easier than this.

It’s your choice to participate in all this, but I don’t like it in the way it’s served now. It’s very cool, don’t get me wrong, but I think it needs to be improved more or integrated in a different way. I’ll wait for all of these things to come out of beta, or for new and better plugs that I can play with. I’ll try to fit in the co.mments and see if I can have it listed off the index. I’ll get back to this soon.