The official coComment weblog

coComment started, as a company, in January 2007. coComment, the concept, is significantly older having first seen the light of day as a proof of concept demo at the Lift 06 conference.

In that time, we have transformed what was a concept into a company with a very different (and much larger) product set, built a team of 22 people and acquired over 1.15million users.

However, in all that time, we’ve not made a cent/penny/grivna in revenues nor have we sought to do so. The funding from coComment has come solely from its investors.

For us, 2008 is a critical year. It is the time when we need to go from ‘promising startup’ to ‘viable business’ and a key part of that is starting to generate revenues. We want to do so in a manner that does not alienate our users nor distract them from what they want to do with coComment.

We have therefore started running advertising on the site, in our feeds to others sites and in coComment windows. I know, of course, that most people would prefer to see advertising-free services but the reality is, of course, that ultimately we cannot provide the service to you without generating revenues.

I also want us to offer our users the opportunity to have an ad-free service for an annual fee of $5.

I’ve seen some comments on other blogs … but not many. I therefore wanted to raise the issue here so that everyone has an opportunity to respond and let us know what they think. We’re all in favour of conversations so we’re happy to start one about this and get your views.

Best regards,

Matt.

coComment is sponsoring the Next Web Conference in Amsterdam next week (April 3-4), where coComment CEO, Matt Colebourne, will present coComment on stage and at our booth.

Next Web is THE European conference for industry thought-leaders, leading web-companies, innovative Startups, visionaries and real Web savvies. If you are at the conference or in town, be sure to stop by and check out the latest updates on coComment. We just launched V2.4 and there’s a lot more coming!

Yesterday I was speaking at the CES/Digital Hollywood panel “The Next Generation in Mobile & Broadband Platforms: Social Networks, Widgets, Search, Information, Advertising and Personalization”. We shared the room with an exciting group of speakers and a dynamic audience. It was an interesting discussion covering a range of topics. We talked about widgets on Facebook and social media and shared best marketing & advertising practices in todays’ digital world, which is highly influenced by UGC (Used Generated Content), with comments/conversations being an important part of it.

It was really great to hear from many of you that came up after the panel to tell us that coComment is solving a real need in the marketplace. We are constantly looking for ways to improve our service, so please keep the feedback coming. We look forward to connecting with you soon for integration partnerships and to tell you more about coComment.

Another event that was the highlight of CES for us was the CES “It Won’t Stay in Vegas Blogger Party” hosted by the Parnassus Group. It was fun to meet new bloggers as well as connect with some of the old-timers, like Robet Scoble, Brian Solis, Sarah Meyers, and Tom Foremsky. Some of the new bloggers we met were interestingly enough from corporate-driven blogs, like Disney Imagineering, which is doing some really cool things to interact with their consumers via a series of blogs around their brands.

The party venue was also very interesting one (The Atomic Testing Research Institute), with many unusual and fun toys (for geeks like ourselves), so we picked up some “Space Ice Cream” and an Einstein video … not exactly what one would expect from Vegas, but it made us happy

Thanks you all that stopped by at the party and the panel and we look forward to seeing you next at the AlwaysOn Media conference in NYC on January 28-30th, 2008.

Kristina Serafim & The coComment Team

From all of us at coComment, we want to wish you Happy Holidays. Thank you for this wonderful year and all the best in 2008!

Yes ! We did it !

coComment Version 2.0 won a DEMOGod award at DEMOfall 07. To say that we were ‘happy’ is to seriously underestimate the situation.

Getting Version 2.0 launched has been a long and difficult road for all of us. However, it makes the success when we do get there so much sweeter. I genuinely believe that as a result of all the honest feedback we’ve received from our users we have produced a much stronger product. So, a big big thank you to all of you for taking the time to let us know, for being honest yet supportive and for sticking with us even when we faltered.

I would also very much like to thank (sorry, this is starting to sound like an Oscar’s acceptance isn’t it) our development team. As is always the way, the business and executive people attend the events, stand up and speak and receive the plaudits. The reality is that the majority of the real work is done in our development office so the award is destined for the wall there.

But, as ever, the journey continues. coComment Version 2.0 is not a perfect product, it can get better and, with your support and feedback, it will.

Thanks,

Matt.

PS. Here we are looking suitably smug

Well, we have had a great response to coComment at the event. Press coverage has been really good and everyone to whom we’ve demonstrated Version 2.0 has been very positive about what we’ve built.

Of course, that’s not to say that it can’t be improved further so please do keep your thoughts and comments for development coming.

I’ve attached a couple of photos of our very active booth in the DEMO Pavilion.

Cheers,

Matt.

coComment is at DEMOfall 07 this week. Today, Tuesday, we got our chance at our six minutes of fame in front of nearly 800 people. I’ll leave it to the subsequent blogs and posts to see how we did but, I have to say, we enjoyed it and we certainly seemed to get a lot of attention on our stand afterwards.

Our entrance

Presenting

Matt speaking

For those who would like to inflict the full presentation on themselves it’s accessible on the DEMO website at the following location DEMOfall 07 Presentations (You will need to select coComment to view)

Matt

Firstly, an apology. The upgrade of coComment to Version 2.0 Beta has been difficult and I know that, as users, you have been inconvenienced. We are sorry and promise not to do it to you again.

As well as the usual teething troubles and unexpected bugs, we experienced a database corruption which made coComment increasingly slow and unresponsive to requests. We believe that we do now have the major bugs ironed out and that the service should be faster and more reliable than before the upgrade. However, if your experience differs please do let us know and we will resolve it for you.

We have also had a lot of feedback on the design and its usability. We have, in response to many comments, reverted conversation display to the old ‘accordion’ style within the MyConversations framework and the client to the previous version. The ‘new’ client, which appears on websites to allow you to control coComment, is now only activated when you use the Sidebar viewing mechanism. We will give you the option as to which client to use, with the default setting being the less ‘intrusive’ version.

This is still a beta product … the final version will be released September 24th … and we are always completely open to feedback on usability/functionality/design/look and feel. Please let us have your comments/concerns and we will respond.

Once again, our apologies for the difficulties. We believe very strongly in the future of the comment space and coComment 2.0 is intended to take the state of the art a long way forward. In trying to do so much, in one step, we created problems for you and ourselves. We will not, in future, shy away from developing the product to move it forward BUT we won’t try and do quite so much in one go !

Please feel free to email us personally with your feedback/comments and thank you for your patience and understanding.

Best regards,

Matt (CEO) – matt@cocomment.com
Nicolas (CSO) – nicolas@cocomment.com
Christophe (CTO) – christophe@cocomment.com
Kristina (VP Marketing) – kristina@cocomment.com

coComment V2 Beta is now live! Please check it out. This is a major update of the service, including many new features, which we’ve been told makes coComment the most sophisticated conversation tracking tool out on the market.

In this process of transition to V2 Beta, we are working very hard to correct any unexpected bugs and provide you with as little interruption as possible. As this is the biggest upgrade to the product we’ve had thus far, we would appreciate your help with identifying and informing us of any issues or inconsistencies you may notice with the new version. Though we did as much pre-launch testing as possible, there may be some glitches that occur now that the new version is in production. We promise to do everything possible to fix the bugs immediately. PLEASE SEND ALL QUESTIONS AND COMMENTS TO: info@cocomment.com

If you’re looking for inspiration is checking out the new features we suggest to try the following:
1. MY COCOMMENT (Your personal page with overview of your conversations, your community and what’s hot in the conversational space)
2. MY CONVERSATIONS (Updates on your conversations and the ones from your friends, groups, favorites plus invitations sent by your buddies to join interesting conversation)
3. MY COMMUNITY (Your friends, groups, favorites, followers and conversational neighbors)
4. MY GROUPS (Starting point to share conversations by interest, only with selected people (private) or extend interactions for your audience)
5. SIDEBAR (Navigate efficiently from any one conversation to another)
6. COMMENT ANYWHERE (Start a conversation on any webpage, comment on and share with your community interesting information anywhere on the web)

Thanks for your support! We’re very excited to bring you these major improvements and upgrades!

The coComment Team

It’s been a busy week for coComment, migrating to v2 and attending more exciting industry events in SF! Last Monday we were at the Geek Dinner, hosted by Loic Le Meur & Hugh MacLeod. It was fun meeting more bloggers and commenters, not to mention the swanky venue. Now Loic has lived up to the likes of Posh and Becks, having his own US welcome event, sans Tom & Katie

Then last night we were at the Bloggers Connect conference. It was great to see the faces of many bloggers writing about real estate. It made us aware just how many different topics our users write about. And we had a chance to learn a few things about buying condos, mortgage rates, etc.

And last, as you know, our development team is working 24/7 on the migration to v2, so look forward to the new site very soon!