Co.mments Tracking Service Shutting Down

Co.mments, a service that enables you to track your comments on blogs across the web, is shutting down on January 11. The founder Asaf Arkin put up a blog post last night notifying users.

I have been hungering for strong comment search and utilities for a long time. I was a fan of co.mments because it allowed me to create a comment feed on my blog. This is something that TypePad doesn't offer built in, except on individual posts. (Note - if you subscribe to the comment feed, it will be gone next week.) Backtype is a promising service, but I find it doesn't catch all comments. But it does a fair job.

Overall, I think Friendfeed has the opportunity to soar here. I envision that they will start to integrate more tightly with blog services like Blogger, TypePad and Wordpress, as well as Twitter, Facebook, Backtype and Disqus. Then, conceivably, it can aggregate all blog comments in one place, connect them to your account and make them searchable.

I still hold out that someone will be able to tie all the conversations together and make them searchable. It's painful going to multiple search and aggregation tools to track the conversation. My bet is on Friendfeed.

A big question remains though - how do you monetize aggregated conversation?

Comments

[Allen]

"A big question remains though - how do you monetize aggregated conversation?"

Are you talking about for the site that takes the comments or the source where the comments should live?

BTW - I've never seen an option to subscribe to comments - but I wish you'd add the "receive an email when someone replies" option.

[Steve Rubel]

Actually, I am talking about having comments around links to my post onTwitter and Friendfeed seamlessly show up here and vice versa.In terms of monetization, it's really a question for Disqus, Friendfeed andthe like. How will they make money on all of these conversations? Dataservices and insights seem like it could be a possibility.

In terms of the notification services, there used to be a comment feed oneach of my posts but I see it's gone now. TypePad is moving me to their newplatform this week so I am hopeful it will be back soon.

[xavierv]

"Data services and insights seem like it could be a possibility."

I personally think this is the business model of the future for any given Web 2.0 startup like Twitter. I also think you are right aout friendfeed, they are sneaking all the juiceful data from the other social platforms, consolidating it, and they can deliver it as a whole to interested parties.

[Ashwin]

I like BackType a lot. I think they do a pretty good job. I am able to find most of my comments out there, within a very short time

[Steve Rubel]

@Ashwin, but how will the monetize? Ultimately, that does everyone in. Itwon't be ads for those guys.

[DaveB]

Hi Steve,

I saw this on www.lifehacker.com the other day and you might find it a useful alternative to Co.mments and BackType: -

http://www.yacktrack.com/home

[Rob Diana]

DaveB and Steve

Thanks for mentioning YackTrack. Yes, it is similar to BackType in that it tracks comments for blog posts. It will be undergoing some significant changes in the next few months as well.

[Rob Fay]

Have you checked out http://www.cocomment.com/ It might fill the void.

[Steve Rubel]

I have but I have the same concerns - how will they make money?

[Torley]

I semi-liked co.mments. It was better than what else I could find, and I'm thankful it helped me for awhile, but it grew very awkward — especially because it had a problem remembering me and I had to repeatedly login. This repetitive activity led to frustration, and I contacted their support to ask about it. I could see they were trying to be helpful, but even with the detailed repro I gave, were unable to resolve my problem.

I like BackType right now — I've had great, direct help from them and I find it suits my needs. The site design is elegant and hassle-free.

[iSponsor]

What are we left with now? In your experience, is BackType better than CoComments?

[Steve Rubel]

My understanding is that Backtype is automated while CoComment requires abookmarklet, right? The more active conversations these days are onFriendfeed. Note I didn't say Twitter - it's way too hard to track.Friendfeed is where the action is but I want to see it all sync.

[iSponsor]

Thank you Steve. Excuse my ignorance, but can comments left on other blogs be tracked on FriendFeed as well, or not yet? In that case, what would you recommend? I tend to leave comments, but some of those blogs I wouldn't revisit often, unless I had some interaction.

[johntunger]

Steve,

It's pretty easy to add a comments feed to TypePad blogs if you're using advanced templates. I have a tutorial here: http://www.typepadhacks.org/2006/03/how_to_make_fol.html

you can then run the rss feed through FeedBurner if you want. The hack in the tutorial creates a feed for all the comments on your blog, not for comments on individual posts.

[iSponsor]

John,

It's easy to track comments left on one's own blog... I am using Typepad and I offer that feature on my blog as well. But what about one's comments left on other blogs, and responses to those comments? Thanks.

[Daniel Tunkelang]

I use BackType and like it. But as for your question on how they or others will monetize the content, why not use an ad-supported model? I'm not fond of the "information must be free" approach to all online content, but if it's going to be free, I'd think they could include ads.

Steve, why do you think "it won't be ads for those guys"?

[Steve Rubel]

Because ad spending is drying up and it's going to the big, quality sites -not untested venues. Adsense won't keep these guys in business.

[Daniel Tunkelang]

How expensive can it be to maintain their site? It seems a lot cheaper to run than Techmeme. I don't think there's much room for it to grow, but I'd think it could make a few cents from ads and pay the bandwidth bills.

If they were more ambitious, they might try to become a full-fledged social media search site (e.g., what http://www.socialmention.com/ is trying to do, and in fact Social Mention's comment search mostly relies on BackType). But that would mean competing with much bigger fish, and I doubt they have the wherewithal to pursue such an ambitious path.

[Christopher Golda]

BackType is very inexpensive to run; we're constantly adding new sources for comment-like data e.g. digg, reddit, mahalo answers, etc. There's a lot of underlying value in comments and online conversations that we're working to unlock.

Thanks for your comment!

[Christopher Golda]

We're definitely not interested in running advertisements right now; we've found there are plenty of other opportunities to make money.

Also, if you find we're missing some of your comments from certain blogs, you can submit them @ http://www.backtype.com/addblogs and we'll add them asap.

Thanks!

[Ankit]

If paid service doesn't works and Adsense too fails then its not worth creating such application! I am saying from developer point of view.

[Aleksandar M. Velkoski]

If he doesn't have the motivation to keep it up then it should, probably, be shut down. However, it seems like a nice service. Like Daniel said, they could modify their strategy to stay afloat or even grow and expand. But, sometimes, competition is too strong.

[Richard Krueger]

Steve - take a look at www.samepoint.com, a conversational search engine that's been indexing comments and other types of social media since Sept. In terms of monetization, there is definitely value in social data. At Samepoint we're looking at rolling out several enterprise-focused services to put social media to work throughout the company.

[rodica]

That's too bad, I liked co.comments too. Still, having to check yet another service is probably not a very smart way of implementing this. FriendFeed (your other post talking about getting friendfeed notices in IM) or, less distracting, have a special area in your RSS reader created for tracking conversations.

Regardless of the way this is done again, it has to stay contextual and has to be compatible with other notification systems already in use.