TechAddress

SezWho Adds Features and Partners to Comment Reputation System

Tue, 21 Oct 2008 16:34:33 +0000

SezWho has announced a new release for their universal profile and reputation service which aims to enhance performance and provide new interface integration options. They’ve also announced feed incorporation with BlogCatalog, the blog directory service.

Additionally, SezWho has formed a partnership with Instablogs, the social news service. SezWho will now add their reputation management and universal profile system for Instablog readers, connecting personal brands from all over the Web into a centralized portfolio. Instablog readers can now take full advantage of SezWho features such as rating posts and content. This union will also mean readers will be able to find what they’re looking for quicker.

As for new features, SezWho offers new options for WordPress and phpBB users. There are four new universal profile templates including support for popular threaded discussion formats. There’s also support for local CSS and JavaScript, Thumbs Up and Thumbs Down ratings for posts, configurable pop-ups, improved support for filtering, support for multiple WordPress installations in a single database, and simplified upgrades.

The new SezWho release will help distinguish the service, as well as change the misperception that SezWho is a commenting system similar to competitors such as Disqus. In actuality, SezWho is not a commenting system that replaces existing platforms, because it does not manage comments. Instead, it provides a reputation and profile system that enhances user engagement and interaction, which ultimately generates more traffic and activity.

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Trendspotting at BlogWorldExpo: What’s Next in Blogging and Social Media?

Wed, 24 Sep 2008 20:33:34 +0000

Source:Mashable!

Paying bills collectively with friends is common, but keeping track of such matters, particularly for recurring charges or moments of extensive cost write-ups (vacations, for example), can be a taxing process in and of itself. You might do it by way of the age-old paper-and-pencil routine. Or through a spreadsheet king like Microsoft Excel. But if in the case that you reside somewhere in the middle and need a quick and simple application to get the job done, a utility by the name of Shareabill may come handy.

It keeps everything sorted. And it’s as much calculator as organizer. You note who is responsible for what and how much they must pay, and as each party billed presents you with money to pay charges to your credit card or recompense for past cash transactions, Shareabill sorts it out until all t’s are crossed and i’s dotted. Furthermore, if there is a discrepancy with a charge that still requires discussion, messages can be posted to help bring clarity to such a situation. (For those “Who said they’d pay for the extra round at the bar last night?” moments.)

There’s really nothing too complex to Shareabill. It sports a sensible design, we think. You might prefer something a bit simpler and more amenable to free-form assembly of bills, but it’s easy enough that it will presumably cause little or no trouble for most users.

Its creators describe a feature in development that will prove useful for those seeking to climb out of the hole that is the IOU. If you’re in the situation that you need to recoup multi-party borrowings intelligently without exchanging cash with the same persons again and again as you run through an extensive history of past dues, Shareabill promises to offer a feature called Debt Shuffle. It is in beta now and closed for testing, however. For the time being, only Shareabill’s standard provisions - a standard desktop browser-based solution and mobile site - are accessible.

Source:Mashable!

This past weekend, much of the Mashable team descended on Las Vegas for the second annual BlogWorldExpo. The conference, which brings together hundreds of bloggers and the companies that provide services to them (platform providers, widget makers, and ad networks) is a combination of dozens of discussion panels, exhibiting companies, and of course, parties.

Along the way, much was gleamed about the current state of the blogosphere and social media, and where it all might be heading in the months and years ahead. The official BlogWorldExpo site has tons of links to coverage around the Web, but here were the major trends spotted by Team Mashable:

Users Own The Comments, Not Bloggers

By my count, at least a half dozen companies at BWE either provided a commenting system for bloggers or attempted to organize comments in a more meaningful way. The main premise behind these companies – which include Disqus, JS-Kit, and SezWho – is that users should own their comments. They provide commenters with a login that can be used across all of the blogs that use their system, and then an account where they can go to manage and track all of these comments in a central location.

As such, the argument goes that if you’re a blogger, using one of these systems should improve engagement because users are more likely to comment when they can own it. These services have been gaining a lot of momentum this year, and the space was further validated yesterday as Automattic acquired one of the top players – IntenseDebate – who was also in attendance at BWE.

Widgets Are Evolving Into Web Rings 2.0

Remember web rings from the Internet of the 1990s? They are making a comeback in a big way in the form of widgets. Numerous widget providers at BWE were offering publishers ways to improve their page views – either by syndicating their content elsewhere or by doing a better job of driving intrasite traffic.

For example, Widgetbox has a new network that allows you to place your blog into an interest channel – such as technology – and then install a widget that links to content from other members of that channel. Meanwhile, Lijit looks to increase page views by adding social search to blogs, while Outbrain looks to do the same by identify your blog’s best content and providing widgets that link to it. Of course, the issue with widgets is that they take up real estate on your blog – real estate that can otherwise be used for making money through ads. Which brings me to my next point …

Everyone is Launching an Ad Network

There are more options than ever for monetizating your blog, and it would seem that everyone with any sort of scale is trying to get a piece of the pie by launching their own advertising network. Some – like Buzzlogic and Technorati – are already live and accepting new publishers, while others are still under wraps and slated to launch within the next couple months. The basic premise of most of them is that they have a network that is large enough and has the critical mass necessary to serve advertisers, while having the data about users and blogs needed to target ads effectively.

With so many ad networks launching, consolidation would seem to be inevitable. Similar to how one of this year’s trends has been aggregating activities from the hundreds of social networks that have launched, perhaps one of next year’s will be aggregating and making sense of all of the ad networks.

Twitter, Twitter, Twitter

One of the most popular posts in the history of this blog was one Pete penned in 2006: “If You Don’t Get MySpace, You’re a Lametard.” The same could probably be said these days for Twitter, at least if you’re a blogger or work in the social media space.

Aside from the fact that Twitter was being used by virtually everyone at the conference to document what was happening and to plan activities, we heard from a number of people and companies not in our immediate social circle that are using Twitter in productive ways. For example, in the “Creating Customer Loyalty with Social Media” panel, we heard from Tony Hsieh of Zappos, the online shoe company, and Frank Eliason of Comcast, the much-derided cable company, about how their respective companies are using Twitter to respond to customers and improve their customer relationships.

Blogs Are Increasingly Becoming Mainstream Media and Vice Versa

Coincidentally, Technorati released its “State of the Blogosphere 2008” report on Monday after BWE concluded. Many of the findings rang true with what we experienced at BWE, especially the assertion that “the lines are continuing to blur” in response to the question “what is a blog?”

There are many reasons for this. As you’ve probably noticed with the new Mashable design, while we still meet the generic definition of “a collection of stories posted in reverse-chronological order,” our blog is now complete with sections for different topics, our own job boards, and also includes coverage and ticketing for our events all around the country. This trend can be seen on blogs not just in the tech vertical, but all over the Web as blogs become small-to-midsized media companies in every sense of the term.

Additionally, at the same time that large blogs start to resemble mainstream media sites, the amount of blog posts is actually on the decline as so much conversation moves to services like Twitter and Frienfeed. At BWE, this was certainly the case, leading Louis Gray to ask “Q: Were there any good blog posts that covered the Blog World Expo panels? All those bloggers, and no “coverage”? Did I miss them?” which was quickly met with the following response from Robert Scoble: “The best coverage was live Tweets and conversations on FriendFeed. That’s what http://search.twitter.com and FriendFeed’s search is there for …”

So What Does It All Mean?

While one could easily conclude with the overdramatic “blogging is dead” as many big blogs transition towards media companies and many individual bloggers embrace microblogging over long-form text, I think the more accurate statement would be “opportunities abound for niche publishers.” One of the coolest things about BWE was meeting lots of bloggers that are finding success outside of the tech space – people who are using lots of the same tools that we are to build an audience and reach underserved niches.

In short, while it may not be the best time to start another broad tech, politics, or celebrity gossip blog, if you’re able to find a unique segment within a big vertical, there have never been more ways for finding an audience and building a brand that will resonate. And, once you’ve done that, there have never been more tools for helping make some money along the way. So blog on, and thanks to BlogWorldExpo and Las Vegas for a fantastic weekend

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Automattic Acquires IntenseDebate to Shake Up the Commentsphere

Tue, 23 Sep 2008 20:34:10 +0000

Source:Mashable!

TechStars, the mentorship-driven seed stage investment fund, presented twelve lucky startups today in their first showcase in the Valley. Unlike DEMOfall 08, where 72 startups battled it out for everyone’s attention, these dozen services got to show potential new investors what they are all about in a more relaxed atmosphere. Most of the services will sound familiar because they’ve already launched and have begun to gain traction.

TechStars Executive Director David Cohen explains the purpose of this special event. “This is the first time we’ve done a demo day in Silicon Valley. We’re just trying to show the Valley what’s going on with TechStars. Many of the companies have their rounds complete, or very near complete. Certainly, adding new investors is one goal, but building awareness for these startups is the real key.”

Here’s a roundup of the twelve startups that strutted their stuff today:

Ignighter makes it easy to go on group dates, which is becoming a popular trend these days. We recently discussed Ignighter in a post about group dating.

Devver wants to convert desktop developer tools into cloud-based services. The theory is that it will reduce setup and configuration time, enable easy scheduling, display rich reports and make it simple to share data between team members.

Foodzie is an online marketplace where consumers can discover and buy food directly from small artisan producers. Small producers can sell their products online, making it easy for foodies to discover their favorite foods.

Travelfli helps frequent flyers maximize the full potential of their loyalty programs and discover the value in this hidden currency. Users can manage their award programs in one secure centralized place, find ways to get free travel using their miles and book award travel online.

Gyminee is a fitness social network for detailed tracking, online accountability, and motivation. Members can find workout programs and track their progress, food and nutrition, and set goals. On the social side of things, they can find gym buddies to keep them accountable towards their goals and participate in fitness challenges.

IntenseDebate today announced that they have been acquired by Automattic. IntenseDebate replaces the default commenting system found on most blogging systems with one that adds identity, threading, reply by email, and more. IntenseDebate can increases subscriber engagement and repeat visitors. They are similar to Disqus and SezWho.

Filtrbox is a media monitoring service that monitors and filters mainstream media, blogs, Twitter, FriendFeed, and more. It then delivers it all in an easy to consume format that can save a lot of time.

Artist Exploder gives bands a dynamic presence on Facebook and offers a one stop application for managers and artists to connect with their fans.

Brightkite is probably the most well-known service in this roundup. They are a popular location-based social network that enables users to see where their friends are, share their experiences and make new friends based on location. You can access Brightkite by Web, text messaging, e-mail or device specific applications like the iPhone.

Occipital uses artificial intelligence to organize photo streams and enables vivid recollection with innovative visualizations.

App-X (Application Experts) provides software as a service (SaaS) to venture capital and private equity fund managers, pensions, endowments and other parties that invest in venture capital and private equity.

EventVue builds online communities for conferences that help attendees network and meet the people that matter to them at a conference. EventVue communities can also help conference organizers generate revenue by providing highly measurable sponsorship opportunities and driving more attendee registrations to their event.

Final Thoughts

The concept of presenting a handful of the best startups you’ve supported to potential new partners and investors makes a great deal of sense. If nothing else, as David Cohen stated, it’s good exposure not only for the startups but TechStars themselves.

Source:Mashable!

Searching for things through a service that scours multiple engines is one thing. Searching for things through a service that scours certain aspects of the news and social discussion space is another. This is what a new invention called Social Mention allows you to accomplish.

Employing Yahoo’s increasingly noteworthy BOSS search platform, Social Mention, an Ottawa, Canada operation, distinguishes its results by their variety of source. If you’re looking for items to do with, say, today’s official debut of the T-Mobile G1 device, you can specify that the engine find blog posts, microblog posts, bookmarks, comments, events, images, links from social news websites, or videos.

Adding extra flavor to the mix is an asset labeled “Hot Conversations.” Everything deemed of the moment is listed, though these are not specific a category. If you search for the abovementioned handheld, and transition from left to right through the available tabs, the picks in the right-hand column stay largely the same.

Everything seems to work without much trouble at all. While it’s a bit difficult to gauge for relevance for links, at least given our brief test of it, the delivery of information is pretty much how you’d expect it to appear. Yet, you’re likely to notice the length of time it takes for the engine to provide information, both from the start and through successive moves to all sections of the results page. A 5-second wait time is what I sense is the average to see results. Not terribly extensive, but noticeable for sure. Keep in mind, if one aspect is cached, the time spent twiddling thumbs is less. Images and videos, meanwhile, may take longer to display. This is in part due to its aggregation of material from sources like Twitter, FriendFeed, Delicious, Flickr, Reddit, Digg, YouTube, and coComment, as well as the many blogs that inhabit the Web.

What has me most excited about Social Mention is its take on keywords and how they are used in the blog world, the new media space, and conversations had in numerous places. Companies and organizations undoubtedly find it valuable to track mention of their names, brands and products to register trends, pinpoint troubles, and generally involve themselves more in the chatter, as they have been known to do in a venue like Twitter. Social Mention simply broadens the scope. Its speed could be improved, but to begin with, its quite an admirable piece of kit.

Note: Mashable is currently running a contest for Yahoo BOSS developers.

Source:Mashable!

One trend we’ve seen this year is the rise of third-party comment systems, with much blog discussion moving beyond the original post. The space just got a whole lot more interesting today, as Automattic – the maker of WordPress – has acquired IntenseDebate, one of the leading providers of such commenting systems.

The deal – announced today on IntenseDebate’s blog – could give the combined company a leg up on competitors, which include startups like Disqus, SezWho, and JS-Kit. Why? Because between the installable version of WordPress and the hosted one on WordPress.com, the company is the #1 or #2 blogging platform on the Web.

While competitors currently talk about numbers in the tens or hundreds of thousands in terms of installations, WordPress has millions of blogs on which it can push the IntenseDebate system. Matt Mullenweg, the founder of WordPress, writes as much in a blog post of his own:

“There is a huge opportunity to increase the traffic and engagement of blogs significantly. WordPress.com alone already gets about three legitimate comments every second — more than a quarter of a million every day. I’m excited to see what the Intense Debate team can do to make things more interesting.”

Thus, once WordPress.com migrates its comment system over to IntenseDebate, all of a sudden Automattic will have the number one commenting system in its hands. In doing so, the service will not only be more attractive to users of Automattic’s blogging software, but users of other platforms as well, since IntenseDebate will presumably boast the largest commenter community, and hence, improve the blogger’s ability to ramp up engagement.

While IntenseDebate probably wasn’t perceived by most as the leader in Web comments before today, this deal makes a ton of sense for Automattic, and is probably causing a few headaches right now in the offices of a number of startups. I asked Daniel Ha, CEO of Disqus, about the news and he responded with the following:

“The deal is a big leap for IntenseDebate and a good grab for the Automattic family. We’re moving in the direction where the discussion is no longer a second-class citizen to the published article — this shows that Automattic is paying attention to what was lacking in the comments. I think Disqus (and others in the space) will continue to work harder on offerings for users of WordPress and the many other platforms.”

They’ll have some time to work on those offerings too - IntenseDebate is headed back into private beta as they work on integrating with Automattic.

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coComment Gets a Face Lift

Thu, 11 Sep 2008 14:32:22 +0000

Source:Mashable!

Another day, another set of updates for another Google product. This time, it’s Google Docs that’s been updated with three fancy options, all three hinting at certain advantages Google Docs can have over desktop office applications.

Dictionary & Thesaurus enable you to look up a definition or synonyms for any word in your document from Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary. It’s located in the tools menu, and it works for English only. Similarly, Encyclopedia lets you check out the description of any word from Encyclopedia Britannica.

Another new options lets you search for images from within Google Docs. Highlight a word, click Tools -> Search… using Image Search, and you’ll get the results from Google Image Search. Find an image you like? Just drag an drop it into you’re document, and you’re set.

All this can, of course, be done in a desktop application, but it shows how easily Google can take advantage of its many online applications and services and integrate them into their products. Now, if only Google Docs weren’t as buggy when it comes to formatting…

Source:Mashable!

You like Digg, but you’re sick of all those stories that don’t have anything to do with extraterrestrial sentient beings? Try out Alien Ufo Believers, a very young (and still somewhat buggy) site that’s all about UFOs and little else.

The site offers UFO-related pictures, videos, accounts and theories, and it’s up to the visitors to decide whether they’re real or fake. Unfortunately, using Firefox, I was unable to vote for items on the front page, I had to actually click on every individual item to vote, which is an annoying bug that needs fixing.

Other than that, there’s also some news and merchandise there, but the fact is that the site sorely lacks content. However, I somehow think that Digg’s concept of upvoting/downvoting would work really well with the UFO theme. In any case, the truth is out there, and it’s up to you to vote for or against it.

Source:Mashable!

Before Disqus, Intense Debate and SezWho entered the social commenting arena, there was coComment. When it first started, coComment used a bookmarklet to aggregate your comments across the Web into one stream, and later tried to make the process even easier by adding plugins. It didn’t offer too many extra features at first, so upstarts like Disqus and SezWho were able to get ahead quickly by integrating more social functionality and other features right out of the starting gate.

I must admit that I have never understood the growing popularity of the social commenting systems. Having comments hosted on someone else’s server where they could be lost forever has never appealed to me. Disqus recently added importing and exporting of comments to address the issue. It seems coComment is still hosting your comments for you in spite of a recent backlash by blog owners requesting comment ownership .

After checking out the beta site for coComment’s face lift, I was left with mixed feelings. Is it a better service than it was before? Yes, absolutely. The new and improved coComment offers many more social tracking features, social networking features and personalization options like a profile page. The company has also teamed up with Retaggr to give you a way to make a “comment business card” you can use to draw other people toward your comments in coComment.

One of the items touted by the coComment team when discussing the beta was a revamped design. The team is right, the new look and feel of coComment is much less crowded and more streamlined than the old version. Even so, I give Disqus a win here if you are looking for “pretty,” especially if you use the coComment sidebar. Once you open up the sidebar, it loses that nice sleek look altogether, and seems crowded and disjointed again.

A plus for the sidebar feature is having a way to follow comments in coComment in real time as you move around the Internet. I’d rather have this feature as something I could integrate into an existing toolbar, personally, but overall it is a nice feature. It just takes up a lot of room on my laptop screen as a sidebar, and makes it harder to follow my tabs.

Speaking of tabs, I am an avid Tab Mix Plus Dev Beta and FireFox 3.x for Mac user, who often has over 200 tabs open as I research articles and generally try things out. coComment’s beta did not play well with Tab Mix Plus or Colorful Tabs. Having the sidebar open caused some serious lag time and several freezes. Turning off Tab Mix Plus and Colorful Tabs seemed to help, but that is a deal breaker for me - any new toy has to work with the old toys as well or I can’t justify using it.

In the end I think coComment has made strides in the right direction. Adding rankings, groups, tags, profile pages, portable comment cards, notification via your MycoComment page and ways to explore the comments of others are all good things. Even so, the buggy behavior with my existing plug-ins is a deal breaker for me, and using any of these social comment services is something I do sparingly.

As for installing social commenting systems on my blogs, well, Disqus has taken a much needed step forward for me with its new import/export feature (and a step backward with reblogging). I’ll be really impressed at the first company that gives us a way to track comments from all of the social commenting systems (to some degree) in one place so we don’t have to maintain all the different profiles at each one.

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Disqus Lets You Profit From Comments on Other Blogs and Grabs Some SEO For Themselves

Mon, 25 Aug 2008 22:30:37 +0000

Source:CenterNetworks

Have you ever been stuck wondering what to post on your blog? Can’t seem to find a topic that suits the current situation? Well a new feature called "Reblogging" launched today by comment replacement service Disqus could help quench your thirst for a great post!

The Disqus reblogging feature allows you to easily click a button on any comment left on a blog using the Disqus service and post it as a full post on your blog. You can basically lift a comment from X blog and place it on your blog! So when you are stuck for a topic, just go to a popular blog that receives a lot of comments, click "Reblog" and bam… instant post.

While the concept of Reblogging works on a service like Tumblr, I just don’t see it as a value-add here. Who benefits from the Reblog process?

The blog publishing the comment gets a juicy bit of content (that’s not in a script code)
The source blog receives a seo-rich link back to the source - this is a great way to up inbound counts
Disqus benefits as a seo-rich link back to Disqus travels with the Reblogged content
Disqus also adds a link back to the commenter’s profile on Disqus
The original commenter who spent time formulating the comment gets nothing

Just like I called out Disqus for "borrowing" traffic earlier this year, I am again calling them out (and understand I like Daniel and think he is a very bright guy!). Add a link back to the comment author’s blog instead of his/her Disqus profile. Then the service becomes more of a value to everyone and might be more beneficial to the community at large. I’d also wonder if Disqus users need to opt-in to this program - when I comment on X blog, do I automatically grant any blog or source with the ability to lift my comment and do as they please? What happens to context - it could easily be meaningless outside of the source discussion. We already see this happening when Disqus comments are posted on FriendFeed - the context is completely missing. This Reblogging feature could lead to some great discussions around comment portability and usage. Maybe we need a licensing model for comments.

In a perfect situation, the only links that would be listed are to the source blog where the comment was posted and a link to the commenter’s blog.

This new Disqus Reblog feature currently works on the Wordpress, Movable Type, TypePad, and Tumblr platforms.

Here’s Disqus founder Daniel Ha’s screencast of how the reblog process works. I hope there’s an opt-out button - I have no desire to participate with regards to this new feature.

More CN Coverage:
– Docstoc
– Scribd
– Twitter

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IntenseDebate Launches Updated Wordpress Plugin and Enhanced Web Site

Fri, 15 Aug 2008 02:30:14 +0000

Source:CenterNetworks

Less than a day after Disqus announced the launch of their updated Wordpress plugin, blog comment replacement service IntenseDebate is out with their own. The IntenseDebate update will ship in private beta mode this weekend with a public release shortly thereafter says ID.

The updated IntenseDebate Wordpress plugin features a better admin control panel along with full data synchronization. This means that comments entered in IntenseDebate will also be sent to the core Wordpress install. This means that you can test IntenseDebate without the fear of losing comments should you decide to leave at a later point.

They have also updated the main IntenseDebate site with a "Swedish" look and feel they say. And there’s also updated Akismet spam protection.

Check out our interview with IntenseDebate co-founder Jon Fox and our technical interview with developer Austin Hallock on our sister site HTMLCenter.

More CN Coverage:
– Docstoc
– Scribd
– Twitter

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