It's been one of the trickier elements of the blogosphere - how do you track the comments you leave on other people's blogs? If you are anal enough, I guess you could bookmark them, but cmon... really.
A couple of weeks ago, Des told me how he's been doing it - he's created a del.icio.us tag called "mycomments" and he creates a del.icio.us bookmark with that tag every time he leaves his mark. I've been trying to the same thing, and it's pretty cool, especially as you can create an RSS feed for the tag. But the only problem is that it doesn't show you what the replies to your comment are (or even if there are any), so you need to go site trawling... how 1995.
Today I tested out cocomment, a new service for doing the same thing, but with added benefits. With cocomment, you can actually see the new comments, but only if they are made by another cocomment user. That's sweet. The only downside is that you need to change the way you leave comments - but only slightly. You need to bookmark the comment BEFORE you leave it, you can't do it afterwards. Not so hard, just requires a change of habit, and we both know how hard it is to change those goddamn things.
Hi Cam, I saw Scoble's post on this, and decided to give it a go too. It simplifies the process for me, and am liking it very much. So I am kind of moving over to it now.
See how it goes.
I like the RSS feed of the comments and replies.
We talked once before about an AJAX desktop, and why you would use one. Well this is one thing I do with it - have the cocoment RSS feed come straight to that desktop. That way I see only the most recent comments updated. If you put this in your standard aggregator, it will clog up pretty quickly.
Cheers. Des
Posted by: Des Paroz | Monday, February 06, 2006 at 11:24 AM
Cameron:
If you use Firefox, there's a greasemonkey script that you can install so you don't even have to click the CoComment bookmarklet button. Much easier.
Mathew
Posted by: Mathew Ingram | Monday, February 06, 2006 at 03:00 PM
Thanks Mathew, that looks like a great idea.
For reference the script is HERE.
Posted by: Cameron Reilly | Monday, February 06, 2006 at 03:27 PM
This sounds great. I haven't fully read everything about it. Would love to see it look at the issue of a number of different blogs looking at the same issue or even being the same article published on different blogs.
Molly
Posted by: Phillip Molly Malone | Monday, February 06, 2006 at 11:20 PM
The GreaseMonkey script rocks - sits there invisibly and does exactly what it should - logs comments with no user action required.
Posted by: Dave Child | Monday, February 06, 2006 at 11:20 PM
going to try out coComment and see how i like it.
will
Posted by: william dutton | Monday, February 06, 2006 at 11:27 PM
wow, this is sweet. why did no one ever think of this program or tool before. its like moving from homeline phone to a mobile with a 500 or 1200 cap for less than $200. you can't go back.
Posted by: william dutton | Monday, February 06, 2006 at 11:40 PM
Testing if I can get this to work with your blog.
Posted by: Phillip Molly Malone | Tuesday, February 07, 2006 at 08:46 AM
(Cam - can you delete the previous version of this comment - I forgot to CoComment it)
One of the features of this that I am not sure if I like is the fact that when you review comments, it takes you into the CoComment website, and kind of locks you in there.
So I saw that Molly had left a comment from my dashboard (NetVibes). Clicked through into CoComments. Kind of felt locked there, and only found a link out to this site and this post.
Web 2.0 should be about bring people in and then send them out, not the Web 1.0 philosophy of capturing users and locking them into your environment.
Posted by: Des Paroz | Tuesday, February 07, 2006 at 09:32 AM
Hey Des,
Yeap, its working for me. I am trying the Grease Monkey thiing but not sure it is working right. It shows me logged in, but not sure it saves it unless I use the bookmark to turn it off and then on again. Also doesn't work if I go to www.cameronreilly.com only if I use reilly.typepad.com. Something about the way Cam has setup the redirect I am guessing!
Molly
Posted by: Phillip Molly Malone | Tuesday, February 07, 2006 at 11:29 AM
Okay, That time it worked fine with out touching the bookmarklet.
Molly
Posted by: Phillip Molly Malone | Tuesday, February 07, 2006 at 11:30 AM
update on this: cocomment pisses me off. It doesn't work half the time and I get this box telling me that my comment hasn't been sent, so I'm deleting the greasemonkey script from my machine.
Posted by: Cameron Reilly | Sunday, May 07, 2006 at 02:22 PM
Hey dude,
Have you checked out the new Firefox extension that Cocomments have released? It seems to work better then the Grease Monkey script. Also I think there is some integration you can put onto your blogs (well WordPress blogs) that allow you to track any comments added whether the commentor is using CoComments or not. Would love to see you add that to TPN.
Molly
Posted by: Phillip Molly Malone | Sunday, May 07, 2006 at 10:10 PM