CoComment

The CoComment site—which tries to create a meta community around blog readers through their contributions—left the development server today for version two. While not everyone was forgiving the hiccups in the transition, overall this site promises to promote interaction and niche community formation by leveraging something people already do: interact with blogs.

CoComment, a meta-community integrating reader comments across blogs and forums, released their v2.

The aim of CoComment is to aggregate blog conversation seamlessly, without requiring much effort on the part of the average user. The developer community has helped to make the site compatible with Firefox, Safari and Explorer browsers and integrated with a number of blogging platforms, including WordPress, Flickr and Blogger. CoComment offers a javascript bookmark that you click when you want to track a conversation, but there is also a Greasemonkey script by Johan Sundström (which requires that Greasemonkey already be installed in Firefox) that will detect compatible sites automatically. On the blog authoring side, sites can be enhanced to include the CoComment tools. There is a WordPress plugin by andare.ch, for instance, that removes the need for the user to install their own integration scripts. Readers are free to just comment.

The cross-connections of individual blog communities are now made visible by tracking comments.

CoComment leverages existing communities to build a meta one around the active interactions readers have with content providers. It not only keeps tabs on each member’s blog comments, but it allows interaction to be handled in one place. There are also many points of articulation in the discovery of new blogs and communities. Added to the original tools for tagging and neighborhood recommendations of similar readers is a social network created through direct friendships and comment feed subscriptions. That means, by simply visiting your profile there are many ways to find a reason to comment further. Rather than belonging to multiple isolated blog communities, readers and authors can use CoComment to discover niches they didn’t know existed.

CEO Matt Colebourne told VentureBeat that 15 percent of all comments take place on the CoComment site. This both illustrates the emergent property that comes with centralizing the “commentosphere” and underscores the desire many blog readers have to avoid hunting down their comments manually, a barrier to sustained blog conversation. The service can track comments in multiple languages, too. It could be a platform for more cross-cultural dialogue than ever before.

There are others in this field, but none seem to offer the depth of features and ways to allow the site to blend into each user’s life. CoComment differs from reader community tools (like MyBlogLog) because of the emphasis on keeping the bulk of the conversation on the publishing blog.

Since launching a year ago, CoComment has grown quickly to over 300,000 users in June. That was before TechCrunch hyped the Beta testing in mid-July, and prior to Tuesday’s upgrade to version two. Mashable reported that integration with Facebook and instant messaging is on the horizon, so expect a population explosion for the CoComment community when colleges start up the new semester in a month.

This is still a Beta too, of course. My Technorati claimed blogs don’t seem to be synchronizing with CoComment yet, and the installation today did have me wondering when I was authenticated and when I was not. Already, however, I have become more aware of the way I comment on blogs and feel more inclined to do so. I’m anxious to develop my profile and then encourage my Twitter and academic communities to join in.