I think comments are one of the least-innovative features on websites today, and yet they can be one of the most important features. I looked into various comment providers a while ago, and found that they did not give me enough control. I also tried some "comment enhancers" that claim to leave your comments on your server but add community features like profiles and ratings. The two I know about are SezWho and coComment.
SezWho looked nice, but I spent hours trying to integrate it with my blog but could never get it to work. Their PDK had errors and little to no documentation. They want you to implement a database and a bunch of abstract php methods that keeps data in sync between you and SezWho. Why can't they just provide a webservice API like all the other Web 2.0 startups do? A year ago they raised a MILLION dollars. I have no idea what they are spending that money on (besides making PR deals with other companies).
coComment was the opposite. It was very easy to get working because you just drop some javascript on the page which intercepts your comment submissions. The problem with coComment is that their website is horrible: worse-than-myspace kind of horrible. Slow, ugly, covered in ads, and confusing. It may have some nice features but I could not, with a clear conscious, recommend any of my blog readers to use it.
Yet again, I have to come up with my own solution. The requirements are simple: I need to be able to link a community where people talk about stuff, to my blog comments, where people talk about my posts. It is silly to create your own comment-community from scratch (like all these comment providers/enhancers are trying to do) when there are much larger communities already out there that your commenters are already apart of. So, I decided to integrate Twitter with my blog comments. More on that in my next post...
SezWho looked nice, but I spent hours trying to integrate it with my blog but could never get it to work. Their PDK had errors and little to no documentation. They want you to implement a database and a bunch of abstract php methods that keeps data in sync between you and SezWho. Why can't they just provide a webservice API like all the other Web 2.0 startups do? A year ago they raised a MILLION dollars. I have no idea what they are spending that money on (besides making PR deals with other companies).
coComment was the opposite. It was very easy to get working because you just drop some javascript on the page which intercepts your comment submissions. The problem with coComment is that their website is horrible: worse-than-myspace kind of horrible. Slow, ugly, covered in ads, and confusing. It may have some nice features but I could not, with a clear conscious, recommend any of my blog readers to use it.
Yet again, I have to come up with my own solution. The requirements are simple: I need to be able to link a community where people talk about stuff, to my blog comments, where people talk about my posts. It is silly to create your own comment-community from scratch (like all these comment providers/enhancers are trying to do) when there are much larger communities already out there that your commenters are already apart of. So, I decided to integrate Twitter with my blog comments. More on that in my next post...
