The short answer to that question is : a lot. I mean that in a positive way. co.mments has such a huge potential that much of that is as yet untapped. Growth potential from this point is huge and impossible to properly define. Here’s are a few things which I think would be pointed in the right direction:

• Harvest comment metadata. You’re pulling in data from the blog page already — why display the metadata as just part of the comment body? At very least the permalink to the comment should be harvested — this would be a huge improvement by itself because we could click from co.mments to a specific comment and not just the whole page. Author data comes next, and then timestamp. It’s all there, you just gotta get it out.
• Track Main/Archive/Category pages. This works, but it’s really ugly. If I enter a non-post-page URL on which there are comments (such as http://singpolyma-tech.blogspot.com/) I expect a similar result to having entered all of the posts on that page. Instead I tend to get each comment section as a comment. Not that cool.
• I’ve said this already, and I know it’s in the works, but a RESTful API. XML or JSON(P) (or both!). You’ve got my data! Give it back!

co.mments is one awesome service with huge potential. All you’ve gotta do is tap it. Incidentally, one of the reasons an API would be cool is that then you can harness the larger sphere of programmers who will be writing code working with it. They will write code so that you don’t have to. The more you open your site to us, the more we can do for you and save you the work!

Mathew Ingram sums it up best:

Web 2.0 — or whatever we’re calling it nowadays — is supposed to be about the conversation, isn’t it? It’s not much of a conversation if you’re the only one talking, a point I have tried to make several times in the past, including here and here. In fact, a blog with no comments is more like a traditional media vehicle, in the sense that it’s a monologue, one that sends a subtle message that the writer has all the answers, and you the reader are simply a receptacle, a passive audience with nothing to contribute.

This in response to Seth Godin’s earlier post in which he explains why he doesn’t allow comments on his blog. TechMeme has more about the controversy that followed.

Kent Newsome posted an economic explanation for why some A-list bloggers refuse to comment or link. He calls it Agoraphobia in the Blogosphere. I love reading about the economic models behind human interaction and media, and I recommend checking this post.

I counted 12 trackbacks to that post. I wonder how many comments Seth would have received if he allowed them on that one post? How many would support his point of view?

I found one comment (on a responding post) that rationalizes his decision, and a few that call it condescending.

A blog without comments is still a blog, but it separates the blogger “in the know” and the masses of readers.

I don’t blog because I want readers on my blog. I want to meet you all and talk in person. But I can’t. Blogging and commenting is as close as we’ll get to stay connected. That’s what blogs are all about: conversations at a distance.

At the end, it’s a matter of personality. Some people are marketing out and out. I blog so I listen and talk. What about you?

When I work on co.mments, I focus on making it easy for you, adding the features you asked for, and improving the “behind the scene” engine.

I also take time off to think and reflect what it all means. How co.mments changes the way we talk with each other through blogs. How it puts the focus back on the individual blog. And you, the blogger.

Jeremy puts it in words better than I could:

And that is the interesting part. He tracks the conversations through the comments submitted through his service. Instead of looking at the full ginormous blogosphere, he is able to look at the conversations that his users are finding important. Think about that: he’s getting a magnifying glass view of the blogosphere, through the comments.

Last night I got to talk to Jeremy about all of that. It was a breath of fresh air.

Beyond the old-new AJAX, the raise of tagging and other valleymemes. We talked about where the tech bubble is going, and what parts of it reach beyond the valley enclave (hint: not much). He’s one of the few who live in the mix of things, but can see beyond the hype.

We also talked about the decline of Web advertising (another valleymeme coming up?) and what will happen after. I can tell you co.mments will take part in that. More in a future post.

Anyway, go read Jeremy’s post. He talks about co.mments, but also five other monitoring services that are key, if you want to do great PR. There’s a couple new to me, I’m going to check them out later this week.

Smiley Cat has 10 tips to improving the comments section of your blog. Why?

For many blog posts, the comments section - where the discussion occurs - is as important as the post itself.

Consequently, it’s worth taking the time to make your comments section as user-friendly and as attractive as the rest of your site.

It’s worth reading these tips and picking the ones that work for you.

And if you are making changes to your blog and looking for some inspiration, they also posted 66 blog comment examples.

Over the past couple of weeks, I made some incremental UI updates.

Some tweaks to the styling to make conversations and comments easier to read. If you’re using keyboard shortcuts you’ll notice the scrolling improved and the pointer is sticky when moving between pages. Unfortunately, it still doesn’t work right with Safari 2.0.

I also got rid of the confirmation dialog that popups when you click Remove, and replaced it with an Undo button. It’s now easier to delete, and if you make a mistake, just undo the last action. You can also undo tracking a new conversation, and clearing the new comment count.

I’d like to see more Web apps adding undo buttons, so tonight I’m releasing a plugin for Rails with the undo feature. It’s written for Rails, but the code is simple enough that you can port it to any other language. So if you’re building a Web app, or know someone who does, you can find the code here.

First an apology, while I was doing the upgrade I broke the tracking engine and a few of you saw an error when trying to bookmark conversations. I fixed those, and hope we’ll have a smooth ride for the reminder of the day.

Working with browsers is never easy. You spend the time getting it working with Firefox, test it for a few days, release it. And then you have to go and do the same thing for IE and Safari. Just a few subtle differences between IE and Firefox, but they do take a while to figure out.

Now back to working on the tracking engine.

A great post by Amy Gahran:

If you view your blog as part of a public conversation, rather than a mere publication, then an easy way to attract more interest and interaction becomes obvious. I call it “strategic commenting.”

For me comments are a great way to talk to people right there on the blog. A great post is not a conversation, a great post starts a conversation. And they tend to flow very naturally when you’re commenting.

Sometimes one post leads to another one. You might be influenced by one post and want to write another one. Or you might want to direct people from one blog to another, because the audience is different. I think I’m doing that right now

So go read Amy’s post, she nails it down brilliantly. I bookmarked it so I can follow the comments, but also so I can go back and read it again. And if you have more tips, please share with us.
Via Guy Kawasaki.

Many of you asked what blogs are currently supported by co.mments. Right now the list includes WordPress, Blogger and recent versions of MoveableType. I’m also tracking posts from Typo and TextPattern, and Flickr photo comments work.

It would be easy to put a full list on the Wiki, but I want your help with that, so I’m going to start here.

Let’s put up a list of blogs that do work, but also what you want me to support. That way I’ll know what to work on next.

Here’s the current list of blogs (and other sources) I have, part from the Wiki part from e-mails I received:

Blogger (*)
Digg.com (*)
Flickr (*)
MoveableType/TypePad (*)
MediaWiki-based Wikis (perhaps at least the “My watchlist” page)
MetaFilter (*)
MySpace
LiveJournal
PunBB powered forum thread
SourceForge discussion forum
Textpattern
Vox
WordPress (*)
Yahoo 360

(*) Currently working.

When I switched co.mments to use the new feeds about a week ago, I made a mistake. As far as I know, it only affects Bloglines users (kwc was first to report it). Even if a conversation had no new comments, Bloglines would still mark it as updated.

Since Bloglines checks the feeds automatically, I couldn’t test it fast enough. I had to make a change, wait a few hours for Bloglines to check the feed again, test the results, try something else, etc. So it took a while, but I finally fixed it.

Unfortunately, due to that problem (and its fix), all your conversations may show up as unread the next time you check Bloglines. This will happen only once, and then things will go back to normal. I apologize for that.

Technical Details

Read this is you want to know the gory technical details.
When Blogline (or any feed reader) asks the co.mments server for an update, it receives a feed that is generated to show all the last updates. If there are new comments since last checked, the feed will include recently updated conversations that show these new comments, but also conversations (and comments) you’ve seen before.

Why repeat the same content? All feeds do that and feed readers are designed to deal with that. It means that if your feed reader stops working, the data in your feed is not lost. It also lets you use more than one feed reader, or share your feeds with other people.

The feed readers I use for testing co.mments ignore old items. If they get a feed with the same item (and most feeds include older items), they simply ignore them and only display the new ones.

Bloglines is a bit smarter, it actually looks at the contents of the item. If it sees that the item has the same name, but the content changed, it marks that item as new.

Each feed tells you when the conversation was last updated and used to do it with relatives times (e.g. “3 hours ago”). Each time Bloglines reads the feed it gets slightly different content. Three hours later, it would say “6 hours ago”. Bloglines consider this an update and marks the feed item as unread.

I fixed that by changing all times to absolute, instead of “3 hours ago” the feed will say “Apr 30, 2006 7pm”. And on the next check it will still show the same time. Bloglines will consider it the same item and won’t mark it as unread.

Since I’ve changed all items in the feed from relative to absolute times, Bloglines will consider every item in your feed to be an update and mark the entire feed as unread. But only once, the next time it checks the feed. Afterwards, it will only mark new items as unread.

I just added keyboard shortcuts to co.mments, so if you prefer to use keyboard over mouse, here’s another way to use your tracking page.

You can use j and k to move to the next and previous conversations. If you’re using GMail or Bloglines, you’re already familiar with these shortcuts.

Use o to open and see comments from the conversation, o again to close it. Click return to go the blog post, and in combination with shift to open in a new window.

You can see a list of all keyboard shortcuts here.

Sociable

If you’re a WordPress user, check out Sociable. It’s a plugin that adds links to all the social sites.

Social bookmarking sites allow websurfers to save, catalog, and share interesting pages they find online.

The Sociable plugin appends links for your readers to use those sites to the end of each of your blog’s posts, increasing your potential audience.

Thanks to Chris Kasten it now includes co.mments.