With each blog comment I make I use two web services coComment and co.mments.com. I also use co.mments.com when I find a blog post that I am interested in following any comments that are made in the future, even if I do not comment myself. Today coComment added features that do what co.mments.com does, but my experience is that it does not do it as well..
I click the coComment bookmarklet before each comment I make on a blog, because once I click Submit Comment, coComment shares my comment, even if the blog author never allows my comment on the blog. coComments greatest flaw has been that I do not have a news feed of new comments on the blog post unless that person also uses coComment.
I use co.mments.com [1] to work around coComment’s flaw. co.mments.com allows me to have a single news feed of any new comments on blog posts I am interested in. I do not have to comment on that blog post to receive new comments.
Today, I received an email from coComment that they added features that should do what co.mments.com does. I am displeased and distracted by the second item in this email:
AS A REMINDER:
Your page: http://www.cocomment.com
Your usename: foolswisdom
Your password: mypassword
I am displeased by this for two reasons. First, I don’t like my passwords being sent in emails, particularly if I did not request changing it. Second, and worse, is that I don’t like reversible password security, because they are weak — I would not be surprised if cocomment stores my password in plain text. If I forget my password, the service should not send me my password, it should assist me in setting a new password.
I noticed this morning that my coComment news feed has a flood of junk. Comments from “(unknown)” that do not have the full comment. This falls far short of how co.mments.com works. It is different that each comment is its own article in my news reader. Then I was reminded that from my news reader I can’t get back to the blog post on its own website using coComment, but I can in co.mments.com .
So the email and new features make me like coComment less though it is still an essential tool for me. And it is no clearer to me what features should be integrated into Flock.
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1. co.mments has an unfriendly domain name because it has a period in the term, but does not include the top level domain .com in the term, so it is easy to end up at http://co.mments , which currently is an invalid web location.
technorati tags:blog, blog comments, comments, comment, collaborate, communicate, discussion, socializing
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Lloyd, thanks for writing this review. So far I’ve had nothing but good times with the newest version of coComment. Perhaps it’s my setup – Firefox 1.5.0.4 and the coComment extension, version 0.2.1.0. Here’s my coComment page if you want to go poking around. I hope both co.mments and coComment continue to improve. I like the owners of both services.
Hi Easton, thanks for the comment. I haven’t seen the “(unknown)” since first thing this morning in my feed reader and I never checked on their website. coComment likely addressed the issue.
You are correct, they are both fantastic groups of people doing fantastic things.
I dislike the coComment extension because there are more comments that I don’t want to record, specifically ones I make on Flickr.
Lloyd, Easton, thanks. I’m glad you like co.mments. I’m always focusing on usability and ease of use, so if you have more ideas for making it even better, I’d love to hear them.
I’ve not used either of these services. Perhaps it is because I’ve been too deep into coding on flock to either blog or read more than a handful of blogs….
Is it pretty much just the equivalent to the flickr “comments on my photos” and “photos and sets you’ve commented on”?
Hi, and thanks for the feedback. Sorry about the password thing, I’m trying to figure out why we did that. I’m almost certain (though I don’t have access to the database to check) that we’re not storing passwords in plain text, though
As for not recording conversations: you can disable the extension (“turn automatic mode off”) for a specific comment if you don’t want to track it. It might be a good idea though to let people to decide to de-activate the service on certain sites by default (ie, don’t track my comments on Flickr unless I expressedly ask for it).
In the meantime, you can use the filters on your Conversations page to view only comments on blog posts, etc. I asked for multiple selection of “comment areas” so that in theory you could choose to view all your comments except those on Flickr — we’ll see what happens with that request.
Hi Assaf, thank you for your comment. I will always want a service that “once I click Submit Comment, coComment shares my comment, even if the blog author never allows my comment on the blog” So co.mments ,with its domain name that is hard for me to share with people, is more likely to get displaced by another service that does the other parts well.
Jesse, yes exactly though a very important feature is that my comments are not wasted, lost, if the blog author never allows my comment on the blog, or worse if the blog is damaged or deleted.
These features are also great on forums and other online communities that are supported.
Hi Stephanie Booth,
Thank you for the comment. coComments progress is exciting.
I hope to see an official response about the password issue. It was a poor decision. Secondly, if a service can send me my password, they are likely not storing it well.
Being able to disabling specific sites would be great.
I am seeing “(unknown) says:” in my news feed again. This is useless to me. You can do a better job of pulling the content.
Please, please let me get back to the blog post from my news reader! Don’t make me jump through a hoop. Make the value of your site make me want to go there as my destination. For low comment posts, if I think I have something to add to the conversation I almost always want to go right to the author’s blog on their site.fool: “I dislike the coComment extension because there are more comments that I don’t want to record, specifically ones I make on Flickr.”
You can do what steph is suggesting, or also simply uncheck the “Link to my profile” box and the comment won’t be sent to your coComment page.
Nice to see the conversation growing here. I think we’re all rooting for some good competition to develop between services like co.mments and coComment – I really think in a year or two we’ll see the whole culture of blogging influenced pretty significantly by greater ease in tracking and following up on blog comments.
Lloyd, I’ve thought about your response to the new coComment and have reviewed it and 21 other blogger responses at my blog. That should keep Steph and the gang busy!
Hi Laurent,
Thanks for the comment. Sure, I realize that. Currently less than 50% of my comments do I want tracked by coComment — I make a lot of Flickr comments, and it has its own tracking. Also, a more minor issue is I sometimes find the coComment comment “footer” distracting with its bright blue logo and link to my account.
Please stop the bookmarklet from now often opening a popup window!
I just checked in my feed, and I get links directly to the comments on the blogs. Not you? I’ll see if we can do something/are already doing something about the “unknown” issue. It doesn’t bother you that the feed adds “steph says:” or stuff like that, right? It’s just the “unknown” that bugs you?
by the way, are you still getting incomplete comments in your news feed? If so, could you point me to a conversation where this is happening? Thanks in advance!
Hi again Stephanie,
Links directly: I have tried another new reader (Flock’s My News) and I now see that the titles are direct links to the blog post. This is great, I have amended my comment above.
Correct, it is just the “unknown” that bothers me, though not that much as I don’t think that individual news items for each comment is good for a conversation flow. This is where the coComment site’s experience is great.
Incomplete comments: it seems I may have been mistaken some trackbacks in that initial group of “unknown” comments.
Mostly, I was upset about receiving my password.
I am impressed by you caring,
Lloyd
Lloyd: again, really sorry about the password thing. I’ll do what I can to ensure this doesn’t happen again (but it’s not something that depends directly on me).
How would you organise the feed? One conversation per news item?
Glad to know the other problems were the kind that are auto-solving
Hi Stephanie,
Organize the feed: It is a tricky problem to solve well, and where coComments working on a web based solution seems most effective. I think there could be a news feed solution that compliments web based solution better.
One of my comment to a Typepad blog has added me to “Rconversation”, which seems to be multiple conversations mucked together.