For me, it is more fun reading and replying to comments on my blog The Hot Iron than it is writing the blog posts themselves. Where I do enjoy writing, reading comments means someone was interested in something I had to say, for whatever reason, and was compelled to join the conversation. I also enjoy commenting on posts on other blogs for those very same reasons.
Once I have commented on a blog post, I sometimes forget about it, or forget to go back to the post and see how the conversation has evolved, if it has at all. These challenges of following blog comments – and as a result conversations – means I am missing out on something, from alternate ideas to if anyone is interested in the topic at all.
Many blogs have functionality built into it to help users following the conversations on a blog post. One form is email notification, where if you posted a comment and opted-in, you can receive an email every time someone else posts a comment. This is handy as you can follow without having to revisit the Web page. Most all blogs which offer this also allow you to unsubscribe, though I have found some blogs that do not and I continue to get emails from them. I have heard larger, more popular blogs don’t offer this as the potential for large volumes of email could be viewed as spam by some email networks. This is an option on The Hot Iron, and as the blog owner I get emails for every comment posted.
Another way to follow along is by RSS feed. Some blogs have a link to subscribe to the comments of a blog post. This is nothing I have tried myself, as I wondered if I would truly be able to follow along. The opt-out of the RSS feed by unsubscribing is very clean. This is not an option on The Hot Iron, yet. I will try this out and am hoping with using folders in Google Reader it will be easy to manage.
There are 3rd-party services for hosting and managing blog comments. One I have heard of is Disqus. I do not use this myself and have had some reservations about turning over all of my comments to another service I have no control over. I would be interested in hearing from others about how this has worked for them.
The purpose of this particular post is to get ideas, as I am not sure how to best proceed with following comments. Please feel free to share what works – or doesn’t work – for you. And please check the checkbox to get informed on what others say.
Did you enjoy reading this? You are welcome to subscribe to The Hot Iron by RSS feed or by email.
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Personally, I always like being able to follow comments once I’ve posted one, and I’m a big fan of the email method. Like you, I never got into the RSS feeds for comments - it just seems like a lot of work to read comments to one post. On the other hand, some people hate additional emails and love RSS, so I guess it’s ideal to have both.
There used to be some sites, like CoComment.com, that would help you follow comment threads, but none of those tools ever seem to take off. I’m assuming that they either didn’t work that well, or didn’t work for all sites.
Comment by Dr. Pete
on 05/06/09 at 07:50 AM
I agree with both of you - when I want to stay engaged in a conversation I usually just turn on the email notifications for new comments. The problem with disqus is that I never go back to disqus to check on the comments The problem with email notifications is that sometimes you might keep getting emails months down the line when you’re no longer interested in the subject. I still haven’t seen any silver bullet solutions.
Comment by
Justin Chen
on 05/06/09 at 11:37 AM
I tried CoComment.com and it was just really awkward and confusing to use. It had an interesting idea, just poor execution.
Disqus.com is another interesting one. It’s a fantastic service for people who want to have comments on their tumblr blog. But yeah Mike, I agree with you, I don’t want to turn my comments over to some third party service. That’s like so 2001 when I had my site with blogger and had to use some third party to do comments, because back then Blogger didn’t do comments. When I moved my site over to pMachine on my server, I had to move all the comments over semi-by-hand. Pain in the bootie!
Although it certainly is nice to have your comments available for people to read in one aggregated place. But Disqus doesn’t have the market penetration to really make this feature work. e.g. I only really comment on one blog that uses disqus. Here’s my disqus comments: http://www.disqus.com/people/spudart/ Not very exciting.
But lately when I leave a comment on a site, I copy my comment and put it into the body of a delicious bookmark. That way, my friends’ blog posts are getting entered into delicious. I tag all these bookmarks with “commented,” that way I have all my comments aggregated into one spot.
But then as long as the comments are in one spot, and delicious offers such fine slice and dice RSS feeds. I use the rss feed for my delicious bookmarks with the tag “commented” to power a twitter account that I’m sitting on. Awhile ago, my name @MattMaldre was available on twitter. I recommend everyone grab their personal name on twitter. It would suck to have be taken away. But I’m afraid that twitter would eventually start deleting dormant accounts, so I seed that twitter account with the delicious rss feed.
So now http://twitter.com/mattmaldre is a collection of all my comments. Yeah, it’s automated, but it’s also fascinating to see how it’s actually an interesting read. (at least for me it is. ha!)
Comment by
spudart
on 05/06/09 at 11:55 AM
I usually do the email option.
I always feel bad when I make a comment somewhere and then forget to follow up on the discussion. Although it depends on the site, some blogs really encourage back & forth between the commenters where others have comments that are mostly pointed back to the original author.
I’m checking the notify box!
Comment by
Emily Brackett
on 05/06/09 at 12:46 PM
Interesting points of view here, and they all have a common thread.
So, is there a better way?!
mp/m
Comment by
Mike Maddaloni
on 05/06/09 at 01:46 PM
This is one of my ongoing (minor) annoyances with TypePad. Their recent integration with TypePad Connect makes it easier for commenters to subscribe to an RSS feed, but there’s still no elegant way to let them receive email notifications. I believe they still recommend FeedBurner, which is now owned by Google.
Comment by
btn
on 05/06/09 at 02:30 PM
I usually follow my comments using http://backtype.com/thej .Its pretty decent.
Comment by
Thejesh GN
on 05/07/09 at 01:59 AM
Thanks Thej - will have to try that out.
mp/m
Comment by
Mike Maddaloni
on 05/07/09 at 07:42 AM
I don’t like the email version, aside from filling your box..it’s too confusing. Being on the page helps me remember who the person is, or the situation, the blog etc. When people email directly after I’ve made a comment I usually don’t know what they’re referring to. I visit a great many blogs and always leave comments.
I also dislike the emails because that doesn’t encourage back and forth…unless something is private.
The feeds, I’ve not tried but I would think it would destroy your readership/page rank etc. If people can visit and read from their mailbox instead of coming to your page…then it’s just email and not blogging, and not interacting and…if no one is visiting and leaving comments your page rank will suffer, or so it seems to me.
I add people to a blog log who frequently leave comments and then I can go back to their page easily.
Comment by
Sandy
on 07/01/09 at 05:09 PM
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