The official coComment weblog

A nice solution from QuarterToHappiness (based on a script from Brian Benzinger) to get coComment automatically activated on Opera. Have a look in our forum.

I know it took a VERY long time before we get it released, but, finally, it is ready now: our Firefox extension has been upgraded to support Firefox 3.5.

If you already have our extension in Firefox 3.0, then you simply have nothing to do to get it working when you upgrade to Firefox 3.5.

If you are already using Firefox 3.5, you need to go to our web site to install our browser extension.

The features are exactly the same as with the previous version: track your conversation (with or without commenting), share an interesting conversation with friends, ….

Enjoy commenting !

Tracking conversation is the core of coComment. And this is not an easy task as in most cases there is no structured way to extract the comments from an article. The only solution is then to get the page and extract the comments from the HTML code.

When working with a limited number of blogs, this can looks easy. But when it comes to millions on blogs, this is becoming a hard job as many blogs are customized and do not follow a standard HTML structure for the content. It can also be that from time to time a major blog platform is updated and the basic structure of the pages is changed.

This is exactly what happened recently with one of the most popular blog platform. And, although we were still able to track a big proportion of the conversations, we had some issues on some blogs where comments where either not identified properly, or ended up being duplicated, creating invalid notification of updated conversations. Thanks to Sue Waters who reported the problem to us, we have been able to identify the issue and fix it immediately. Our database is now being cleaned as we extract the correct conversations: you might get some invalid notification when we fix a conversation you are tracking, but this side effect will not last for long.

Whenever you identify that we are not tracking properly a conversation, do not hesitate to send us an email to integration_AT_cocomment.com or notify us on our Twitter account (@cocomment). We will do our best to fix it ASAP.

Well, at long last I hear you say, we are able to announce the winners.

I’m sorry it’s taken so long to get this done … due to staff changes and the rather rapid disappearance of the contest site we had some trouble getting the data to finally confirm the winners.

We were delighted with the response to the competition and hope you enjoyed participating. I’m sure it won’t come as any surprise, since you can all read the comments, that the majority view was in favour of Marina … but Danny came a very close second with support from a vociferous minority.

Anyway, to the winners …

HIGHEST RATED VIDEO

A close competition for this one but, finally, you decided that the winner was … Marina FTW

MOST CREATIVE VIDEO

OK, we admit it, this is more than a little subjective but we did take into account everyone’s comments to make sure that our views concurred with yours, which they did.

The winner was … Marina Best

MOST ACTIVE COMMENTER

This one was, of course, the easiest to score and the winner by some margin, despite losing some of her comments, was … Spicy

The prizes will be sent out by the promotional company but, if you haven’t received them in 2-3 weeks, please let us know.

We are experiencing some issues with our infrastructure and we have to put the service down.
We will notify you as soon as the service is up again.

Sorry for the inconvenience.

UPDATE: The service is up again. Again, sorry for the outage.

I’m delighted to announce that, contrary to rumours circulating recently, coComment has not been acquired by JS-Kit but that we HAVE entered into a partnership agreement which will assist both companies and offer our users more functionality.

We are going to focus on our tracking business for users and will be launching our new coComment PRO solution for Brand Owners very shortly.

In future …

- coComment will distribute JS-Kit Comments, Ratings, & Polls
- All JS-Kit conversations will be automatically tracked by coComment

All existing sites using coComment comments to power conversations on their sites will continue to be fully supported. We do intend to migrate but only once we are able to do so seamlessly and without inconvenience to the site.

This is an exciting time for both companies as we grow and offer more products and services to our customers.

As ever, please let us know what you think and feel free to ask any questions. Following is a simple FAQ addressing some of the already presented ones …

Will I lose comment powering on my site ?

No, absolutely not. coComment will continue to power comments on your site until you decide to migrate or we are able to do so in a way that the migration requires no change to your site.

I want to add some JS-Kit functionality (polls, ratings, pre-moderation etc)

Please contact us to discuss a migration plan … most of these can be added very simply.

What will this mean to me in terms of traffic ?

As ever, we can’t guarantee that an audience will visit your site but this deal will massively increase the size of the potential audience on coComment. Since coComment only ever allows commenting ON YOUR SITE this has the potential to significantly increase visitors if your content and conversations prove popular.

Why are you doing this ?

coComment started offering outsourced comment powering because, in some cases, this was the simplest or only way to gather the comment data. We believe we’ve built a market-leading comment engine but it’s not our core business and we would prefer to focus our efforts on comment management for users and data provision to brand owners whilst giving our sites the ability to benefit from a company solely focussed on their needs.

Has JS-Kit acquired coComment ?

No. This is a partnership agreement for the benefit of coComment, JS-Kit and our respective customers.

Who are JS-Kit ?

JS-Kit is the fastest growing provider of outsourced social network tools to sites. Currently offering comments, ratings, polls and more to over 600,000 sites including AOL/Userplace (300,000 sites), eVite (comments on over 200 million invitations annually) and WorldNow, JS-Kit is also the recent acquirer of the HaloScan business. They have just announced their latest successful funding round and are therefore stable and continuing to grow despite the current circumstances.

The third week was  hard, and I am at 56 pushups. Hoping to do more but I get shaky still around 52. How are guys doing? How many push ups  are you at?

This weeks winner is Brian Bonn. You got yourself a manly coComment shirt headed your way.

Check out her coComment profile.

We have just released a range of exciting new features to ensure that coComment works everywhere !

We can now integrate your account with Twitter and FriendFeed: sigup in coComment and all your comments are automatically sent to your Twitter and FriendFeed profiles. To enable this, go to your account page and follow the instructions.

Our coCobar (the toolbar that is displayed bellow the commenting area when using our extension or on integrated blogs) has been fully redesigned:

• New look
• Notification area: never miss any updated conversations

Whenever you receive a notification in the coCobar, just click on the message and a small popup will display the relevant information.

Wordpress sidebar plugin: on Wordpress blogs, just install this plugin and drag and drop to add coComment integration or any of our sidebar widgets (your last comments, last comment on your blog, top users, top tags). Sigup and use our integration wizard to get the instructions.

Our bookmarklet now supports Google chrome. If you are a Chrome user, just click on the bookmarklet to enable coComment before commenting. Unfortunately, it is not possible to write an extension for Chrome, but we are following this new browser development and will write an extension as soon as this feature is available.

We also improved the tracking support for Youtube: track your conversations on Youtube and never miss a comment !

Hey coCommenters,

As you know more and more people are asking for help and seeking answers via social networking sites like twitter etc.. I wanted to let you know besides giannii@cocomment.com you can reach me at a couple of these sites; twitter, facebook, friendfeed, and plurk. For immediate gratification I have a couple instant messenger profiles for coComment. On skype (coCommentCM), and aim/msn messenger just add my email as your buddy giannii@cocomment.com.

I’d love to hear what you enjoy about coComment and what you think we can do to improve your experience on our site. Also if you just want to chat shoot me a message. Keep in mind I am on Pacific Standard Time so  I will get back to you as soon as I can.

Talk soon,

-Giannii

Do you get a thrill when your latest comment sparks a frenzied debate?

Danny Bonaduce and Marina of HotForWords.com definitely do, and starting today they are engaging in a war of words competition (contest.cocomment.com), hosted by CBS Radio and coComment.

For the next month, Danny and Marina will be battling it out to see who can make the most clever and outrageous comments. Each day, the outspoken competitors will be challenged to chime in anywhere online on hot topics. Tune in and follow Danny and Marina’s trail of comments – no matter what site or blog they’ve been posted on via their coComment profiles.

To add to the fun, we at coComment are inviting you to join in the debate and share your own two cents about your favorite commenter – Danny or Marina to win a 3G iPhone!

Looking forward to seeing you on http://contest.cocomment.com!