I was actually thinking of something like this. I was going to make it my first RoR project but that might just be to ambitious. Anyways, plain and simple,
coComment is the only service that allows you to enjoy the full potential of blog comments on the web. Before coComment, the blogosphere was not a global conversation, but tons of fragmented, hard to follow, and untrackable discussions.
Using coComment, you can now keep track of what you have been commenting on, display your comments on your blog, and see what is new in the discussions you are participating in (if other users are also on coComment).
One con (at the moment), is that “users can only track comments from blog posts that they have actually commented on, and only comments left by other cocomment users are shown.“1 But this was a day or so ago. I have to check the new version out myself as I’ve just signed up a few moments ago.
There might be one small gripe though. As I was taking a look at coComment’s Blog Integration section which lists which browsers and blog/CMS/site-platforms it supported, I read that Movable Type blogs must have the following format,
<title>blog name : article title</title> or
<title>blog name | article title</title>
Otherwise, the comment (in coComment) will show up as “(untitled)”.
So, seeing that, there might be an issue of having everyone involved have a standard way of templating their TITLE-tags. I, for one, see this as a big thing (so it ain’t “small” after all). If this is true, and hasn’t been addressed in it’s next iteration, coComment is pretty much forcing everyone to do “this and that.” Then again, we’ll see how this plays out with Microformats. So if you are listening/reading this oh-Lords-of-coComment, please do let us know. (Then again, I just signed up and haven’t gotten to play around with coComment that completely yet.)
All in all, the service is practical and very useful for those that like to read and interact with different blogs. It’s great for coComment to have gotten around and implemented something useful to the millions that are very involved with interblog-interactivity. In it’s current state of version 0.4c, I just can’t wait to see the other features it will have when it rolls out from “beta”. Pretty much, like all the other “Web 2.0” application-sites. =)
Other than it’s bold ORANGE color, FeedXS launched yesterday. A Netherland-based company,
FeedXS gives everyone in the world and every business its own personal feed. By creating a feed, everyone who subscribes to your feed, will always be on top of your latest news.
It’s totally FREE!
Meanwhile, while this looks like a promising web application, I wonder how it will effect the Blogosphere. By reading the Personal Feeds tour section, I understand that you pretty much just add entries and publish them to your feed. Somewhat like the workflow on Blogger.com (or any blogging tool) but instead of publishing your latest entry on a webpage, it updates/appends your latest entry to the feed.
Will we see a decrease in blog-site creation in the future because of services like FeedXS? People are always wanting to take the easy route. I see this as one of those things. But, bloggers are a different class of their own. They seem to want everything they create and write under their complete control; for me at least. Also, what would happen to those bloggers who get some cheese by writing great content (i.e. Om Malik, Andy Budd and Michael Arrington to name the least)?
Interaction. What willl happen to the communication that blogs thrive on between the author and his/her readers? I guess this is a drawback. Instead of just posting a comment on the entry page of the post, one will have to click on the entry’s archive page URL; that’s even if the author has a site. I guess I just see this product as a one-way service. Even though it’ll be easy for everyone to publish an RSS feed, it does not provide the readers a way to give a way to send feedback or thoughts back to the author. Or does it?
One of the “weaknesses” that I have (other than a sucker for FREE food) would probably be the fact that I like to learn a lot of new things. How can this be a weakness? Well, it’s kind of like playing sports. You would like to get into each sport you see on TV or the ones that your peers love to play. By doing so, you get to become a great athlete. However, a downside to that would be you not being able to become a great player of a particular sport. Now, this might not be true for everything and everyone but collectively, it is.