Yep, we’ve been TechCrunched. This is old news by now, at least at the rate the blogopshere is moving, but still bears repeating. Lots of positive comments, so I guess we’re on to something good.

As Michael says, “The site is a bit raw and unstable”. After all, it started from a small project to scratch an itch, to solve a problem I had. For a while, I ran it on my computer, checking for new comments every morning, before I realized it begs to be shared with more people.

How many more people? It grew from two to ten, and then Scoble and MetaFilter posted about it … and the server crashed. The rest of the week was an excercise in patience, as it was barely keeping up with the load. It took a few more weeks to get things straightened up.

Last week it was finally getting ready for prime time. I’m glad to see it’s managing well so far, but then you’d expect that from open source technologies.

And the more people use it, the better feedback we get to keep improving. I especially like Michael’s suggetions:

As co.mments evolves, there are a number of features I’d like to see added. First is a way to tag posts while bookmarking them for easier search later, as well as grouping with other users’ bookmarks by tag. There also should be more social aspects in general - for example, I’d like to know if others (and who, and how many) are also tracking a post.

One unavoidable issue - you can’t hit the bookmark button unless you are on the permanent URL for a post. Just being on Techcrunch.com, for example, won’t work. A nice feature would be a drop down list of all posts that are included on a URL (which would be easy to do by looking at the RSS for a page) if you aren’t on the permanent URL page for a post.

All better ways to help you stay on top of the conversations. That’s the official co.mments moto. And yes, there will be more great stuff coming down the road.

FeedBurner has a great feature that lets you decorate your feed with interactive features. They are called FeedFlares. You can add a FeedFlare that lets your readers tag a post with del.icio.us, e-mail the author, see Technorati cosmos, and much much more.

I just added a FeedFlare for tracking comments with co.mments. When you subscribe to the feed for this blog, you’ll see at the bottom of each post FeedFlare links. One lets you e-mail the post, another e-mail the author, you can bookmark the post with del.icio.us. And the last one lets you track all comments on this post. Click on it, and it will add the post to your co.mments tracking list.

If you are using FeedBurner and you want to add co.mments to your feed follow this simple steps:

1. From your FeedBurner page select the Optimize tab.
2. You will see a list of options on the left side, click on FeedFlare.
3. If you haven’t used FeedFlare before, now is the time to start. Enable FeedFlare for your feed.
4. Look for the text box that lets you add new FeedFlares, and enter this URL: http://co.mments.com/feed-flare.xml and click Add New Flare.
5. Save your changes. The save button is at the very bottom of the screen.
6. You’re done.

Whether you’re using co.mments with an account or without an account, there are certain things you’ll want to know.

Here’s the help page that explains the differences, and how to use co.mments with and without an account.

In my previous post I hinted at some potential problems. For the curious, here’s are some more details and how we got around them.

Feedback

As a user with an account, you want to tell when you’re logged in to co.mments. No rocket science. If you are logged in, co.mments will show your username at the top of the screen. The bookmarklet will also show your username, for quick visual feedback.

If you are not logged in, the bookmarklet will remind you to login. Ignore this if you don’t have an account.

The lost conversation

You’ve logged out of co.mments, or you’re using a different browser and didn’t login. You’ve just bookmarked a conversation, but it won’t be added to your account. It happens to me a lot. I can tell when it happens, the bookmarklet reminds me to login. But it’s frustrating to have to login, go back to the original page and bookmark it again.

Before allowing people to use co.mments without registration, I wanted to make sure it doesn’t annoy people who do have an account. The solution ended up being very straightforward.

When you login, co.mments automatically adds the recently bookmarked conversation to your account. It’s actually easier than it was before, when you had to login and bookmark again.

Switching

You’re using co.mments for a while and decide it’s about time to register for an account. Unfortunately, we can’t just change an anonymous account into a registered account. That will work for most people, but it could cause problems to people who share the same computer.

I decided to go with the element of least surprise. When you decide to register for an account, co.mments creates a brand new account, but offers you to start your new account with all the conversations you are currently tracking. There’s only two steps to switching:

1. Register for a new account and check the option to transfer your conversations.
2. Subscribe to your new account’s tracking feed. It’s a different feed that you’ll need to use as you add new conversations to your account.

I’m not too happy with the way my tracking page works right now. I’m tracking 49 conversations, and it’s too hard to navigate and find the new comments. The main conversations page is also too long and there’s no way to go back in time.
I intentionally placed more emphasis on the feeds, mostly because they were the harder problem to solve. Now it’s time to pay a bit more attention to the tracking page.

So I penciled this for the next major release, and started playing around with some ideas. Nothing good so far.

Then last morning. I got an e-mail from Eljo, who came up with an idea for a better UI that’s easier to use, whether you’re tracking two conversations or two hunderd. The e-mail included screenshots, which are now up on the Wiki.

I love it. The new design is just right. You can easily spot conversations with new comments, less scrolling, and if you have more than a week’s worth of conversations, you can navigate back and forth.

This will make all the difference. So big thanks to Eljo.

As a user of co.mments, you register for an account on the co.mments.com Web site so we can let you track comments wherever you go. If you want to start a new topic of discussion on the blog, you register on blog.co.mments.com. If you want to add content to the Wiki (with attribution), you register on wiki.co.mments.com.

What … a … pain.

I don’t like multiple registrations. People I know don’t like multiple registration. It’s annoying and confusing and wastes time. There must be a better way.

Does anyone have experience with WordPress and MediaWiki? I need a solution so users can register exactly once, and have accounts in all three services.

At MashupCamp I had a long discussion with Gabe Rivera. Gabe is the brilliant mind behind Memeorandum, my favorite memetracker.

I spent half an hour listening to Gabe convience me that user registration is evil, and I should get rid of it. He didn’t actually use the word evil, he just said a lot of things that made sense. And he’s right. There must be a better way.

His idea has been haunting me for the past couple of weeks. How do I get rid of user registration? How can I make co.mments useable without it?

Why user registration?

Let me first explain why we ask people to register in the first place. It’s not because we want to make your life harder. Comment tracking should be as simple as possible.

It’s not because we want your e-mail address. You already get more spam than you care for, which is why co.mments has a no-spam policy. We’re not here to bother you, we’re here to make your life easier.

We only ask for e-mail in case you forgot your password, so we can send you a new one. And right here is the prolem. You need to create a username and password, and then you need to remember to use them.

Why?

Let’s say you use Internet Explorer at work to track conversations. And then you go home and use Firefox on a different computer to track the same conversations. Or maybe you use a PDA or your cell phone. I use two browsers and a cell phone, so I have that problem.

Because they are all different browsers, there’s no easy way to identify you. To recognize when you are using co.mments so we can serve you the right conversations.

So user registration is inevitable, if you want to use different computers or different browsers.

Is this a problem for you?

A lot of people, like Gabe, don’t care. You use the same computer and browser all the time. Or you use co.mments for disposable feeds. For you, registration is a burden. No value.

So let’s say we get rid of user registration. You still use the bookmarklet to track new conversations. You still use your feed reader to follow the conversations. You can use the tracking page, all without ever logging in. It works because it recognizes your browser.

There’s a downside. You can’t use more than one computer or more than one browser to track the same conversations. If your computer crashes, it’s tricky to retrieve the conversations you’re already tracking.

So the best solution, is to let people register for an account if they need to, and let people use co.mments without registration if they want to. The best of both worlds.

So what’s the problem?

Say you do have an account, but you happen to be logged out. You bookmark a new conversation, which gets added to a tracking list associated with your browser, not your account. Then you log in, and … no conversation. Where did it go? What happened? How do you get it back?

That’s a problem. I think I have a solution, it’s not perfect, but it can help you retrieve the conversation. It will make life easier for people who don’t want to register, but might be tricky for those who do need an account. It’s been bugging me for a week, and I’m still working out the kinks.

Meanwhile, I want to get you all involved and hear what you think. Is this useful? Would it make your life better? Are you worried about losing conversations?

I’m taking a moment to thank co.mments users who helped improved the service. In not particular order.

Ryan King, one of the smartest developers I know, for helping with last minute fixes before launch, and Safari testing. And also for snark spicing our life.

Sylvain Briant for translating the introduction page to help our French users. And for contributing an idea that will be added in a future release.

Luisin did the first testing of the Blogger theme integration, then posted about it on his blog, and right here, for the benefit of our Spanish speakers.

Simone Carletti for telling Italian users about co.mments.

Thanks for all your help.

Thanks for letting me post on your site.  I hope that was intentional.
It would be really cool if there was some javascript or something I could execute in my blog’s code for submitting a new entry, that would automatically track comments made on the entry. I would know the URL for the comments page at that time.

To keep the disruption as short as possible, maintenance has been scheduled for Sunday night, 11pm Pacific. The server will be down for a couple of hours, to make some updates to the database and core libraries. What’s waiting for you on Monday are a few new improvements.

Once again we’ll be going down for maintenance for a couple of hours this weekend, I’ll let you know of the exact time in advance. This time to introduce the following new features:

All comments in your feed. When you’re tracking a new conversation, co.mments doesn’t add any existing comments to your RSS feed. Instead, it waits until new comments are available. I know several people found it confusing, and it doesn’t seem as useful as I though it would be. Once the change is in place, your RSS feed will collect all comments from the conversations.

More aggressive comment tracking. There’s a lag between the time a new comment is posted and when co.mments finds it. A few key changes to the algorithm will shorten this lag, especially for blogs that have active discussions going on.

Ping service. An even better way to reduce the lag, by letting blogs ping co.mments when a new comment is posted. Once operational, and if you enable the ping service on your blog, new comments will show up in a matter of minutes. We’re going to start with WordPress and MovableType, then Blogger.

Better documentation. We have a Blog and a Wiki. It’s a great way to get involved in what’s happening, learn new tricks, talk about features you want, report bugs that need to be fixed. More details later this week.

And as always a few behind the scenes improvements that you won’t notice, but will improve the service.

Posted by Assaf in Announcements, Mar 3, 2006. 5 Comments