MappingTheWeb //

If you’re like me, you always seem to have an opinion on everything. For this very reason, I love comments. Every so often I read a blog post that either stimulates my brain in an unexpected fashion or angers me to no end. At this point, I feel a need to express myself to the author and/or other readers. Others experience the same feeling. Hence the need for comments.

But there is a fundamental problem with the system. Comments are extremely hard to track on the net. You can either bookmark the page or try to remember the given post. But how hard is that? Nearly impossible. But yet, you want to know if the author responds to your reply… or better yet, another reader has something to add to the ongoing discussion. Once again, if you’re like me, you’re dropping comments all over the net, like Fat Albert drops bombs at a chili-eating contest. Errr… something like that.

Let’s try another example: if you were to randomly hand out a couple hundred business cards at a conference, then try to remember who you gave them to, I would wager that it would be difficult to say the least. And now for the informercial…

Comments were hard to track UNTIL now!

Ambitious entrepreneurs saw the need for a tool could that could help blog readers keep track of their comments. From this vision, several start-ups were born - the most notable being CoComment, Commentful, and co.mments.

These sites allow a user to sign in and quickly and easily view all current discussions and commenting activity in one place. No need to surf to all the given blog posts anymore. An aggregate area facilitates the process.Very cool, very easy. In most cases, tracking a comment thread requires nothing more than a single click, or perhaps just simply submitting the comment.

The three main services listed above also provide various other features such as tagging, sharing, and exploring the community. But at the end of the day, they all assume the role of a simple, comment-tracking tool.

I personally use CoComment as it came recommended by a colleague, although I’d imagine the other two aforementioned services will get the job done as well.

If you comment a lot, these tools will be your saviour. No more scavenger hunts…