Review: coComment – the future of tracking blog comments?

coComment is an online service that helps you keep track of your blog comments (on other blogs), share your comments on your own blog, and be informed of new comments.

Signing up coComment

coComment is currently in its beta phase. Invitation code is required to sign up a coComment account. I am lucky enough to “stumble upon” an invitation code and signed up for coComment.

Note: No, I do not have any coComment invitation code left. Please do not ask me for it, even though I hoped I can help…

What is coComment?

Basically, coComment consists of three parts: capture, share, and alert. Capture is the most important part of coComment. It copies your comments on other blogs and track back your comments later.

coComment currently supports a few popular blogging tools such as Blogger.com, MSN Spaces, MySpaces, TypePad, WordPress, and Xanga. MovableType (MT) blogs are NOT supported yet, but there is an untested unofficial workaround.

Share is a feature to show your comments (on other blogs) on your own blog or website. The integration is as simple as pasting a piece of HTML code to your website. Here is the screenshot of my coComment blog box.

Looks nice, doesn’t it? You can also modify the CSS style to make your own custom layout.

The coComment’s Alert feature keeps you updated about new comments by other coCommenters by RSS or ATOM feed. Keep in mind that if the commenter is not a coCommenter member, his/her comment will NOT be tracked by coComment and you will not get informed about the new comment.

In order to solve the problem, blog authors need to integrate coComment feature into their blogs. But the blog integration code is not yet ready by the development team at the time I am writing this.

How to use coComment?

Since coComment is a web based application, no software installation is required. You only need to install the coComment bookmarklet (a javascript link) to your web browser. Currently tested browsers are Firefox, Internet Explorer, Opera, and Safari.

After installing the coComment bookmarklet, you can comment on other blogs as usual. After entering your comment, click the coComment bookmarklet on your web browser. Wait for a few seconds and you will see a little coComment icon with your nickname under the blog comment box. Then, submit your comment. You will get a light yellow box that says it is submitting your comment. At the same time, your comment will be submitted to coComment and logged under your account. Simple huh? :)

My two cents

The blog comment tracking idea is great! The “Alert” feature is something I am looking for. I want to track new comments on blog posts I have commented. But coComment’s alert only track comments by coComment members. The coComment blog integration is a solution but is not available yet…

Currently, coComment only helps me record my comments for easy future references. But (again), it does not support MovableType which is one of the most popular blogging tool.

Anyway, I am looking forward to coComment’s final release. Hopefully it will be available for free or with a little charge. ;)

Other coComment reviews:

• Track your comments, no matter where you make them — Scobleizer
• CoComment Screen Shots and Clarifications — Techcrunch
• Comment Tracking with coComment — Solution Watch
• CoComment reviewed — the blog herald
• First Take: Cocomment Takes Comments Out of The Dark — /Message