CoComment upgrades, now worth using
CoComent is a popular browser tool for tracking conversations in the comments sections of blogs. It catches the comments you've made around the web and comments made after yours. It was initially launched in February.
Context & Ripple Effects
CoComment launched in February 2006 as a browser tool that follows the comments a reader leaves across blogs and flags replies made after them — early takes like Cocomment Takes Comments Out Of The Dark and Solution Watch's walkthrough treated it as a promising fix for scattered conversations.
Five months on, TechCrunch judges the upgraded version finally worth using — notable timing, since rival Commentful began tracking comments on Digg, YouTube and blogs in early July, making this the first real head-to-head moment in the young comment-tracking niche.
First-order effects
- Bloggers who left comments across multiple sites now have a tool TechCrunch considers usable for following reply threads without revisiting each post manually.
- CoComment moves from launch novelty to competing product just as Commentful enters with broader site coverage including Digg and YouTube.
Second-order effects
- The two trackers are forced into a feature race over which platforms get supported — Commentful's wider network reach pressures CoComment to expand beyond blogs or concede that ground.
- Publishers gain an external audience for their comment sections: tools that pull readers back into threads raise the value of active comment communities on individual blogs.
Third-order effects
- If comment-following sticks as a habit, conversation management migrates from individual blogs to third-party services — a shift that would eventually invite full commenting platforms rather than mere trackers, though no such product exists yet as of mid-2006.
- Aggregation of distributed web conversations becomes a recognized product category, with whoever owns the reader's comment identity holding leverage over publishers.
The trend: Web commentary is shifting from scattered per-blog threads toward aggregated, service-managed conversations tracked across sites.