February 15, 2006

CoComment not so cool, perhaps?

Lee Hopkins wrote this 5:11 pm:

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coComment: did they experience a faster take-up than planned?A little while ago I thought that coComment was a cool app.

I still do. But it must be having a few beta-test teething problems, or else it didn’t expect the take-up its received and so is having problems handling the volume of traffic.

I say this because I am still having problems receiving an accurate rss feed about my comments and the follow-up comments. Even the personalised ‘conversations’ page on the coComment site isn’t capturing all of the comments made on blogs and posts that I’ve commented on. I have gone to the posts on the blogs where I have commented and the follow-up comments don’t appear on my coComment page.

Yes, I’ve done all the right things like signing in and making sure my cookies are set low enough to allow the login pop-up; I’ve even noticed that, on where I made an original, successful coComment, follow-up comments appeared in my coComment conversation page for a day, then the service ceased to add any further comments that were added on the original blogpost.

I have tried with both Bloglines and my GreatNews aggregator to view the latest comments. GreatNews shows me, for example, that there are 18 unread posts in my feed, yet when I go to view them I only get to see three, and they are very old posts made 3-4 days ago when I first started trying out coComment. Nothing more modern. Even if I mark my coComment feed as ‘read’ and refresh it, it still shows 18 unread posts but those same three old comments keep appearing.

HM… A very worthwhile service that appears to be in need of a few bugs squashing.

The challenge for any company or individual that creates something which far exceeds their take-up expectations is that they are then victim to the hype and hysteria of others, over which they have very little control. As Shel’s judge pointed out, the only redress may be via their own blog, but that might sometimes do little to cool down the flames of ardour that oh-so-rapidly turn into flames of anger. It may well turn out that coComment’s unexpected windfall of users may be its Achilles heel and the meme-spread a Pyrrhic victory.

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3 Responses to “CoComment not so cool, perhaps?”

  1. Stephanie Booth Says:
    February 15th, 2006 at 6:36 pm

    What you’re complaining about is a known issue: coComment can only track comments made by coCommenters. There is a technical issue here: scrape post comment feeds? How often? What about platforms which don’t provide post comment feeds?

    It’s annoying, but it’s not something coComment pretends it does and doesn’t do. They’re aware of the problem and I’m certain they’re thinking about a solution as we speak.

  2. Stephanie Booth Says:
    February 15th, 2006 at 6:42 pm

    Some forum threads raising the issue:

    http://www.cocomment.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=15
    http://www.cocomment.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=44
    http://www.cocomment.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=144

    As for “did they experience a faster, larger take-up than planned?” See Laurent’s comment here: http://pascalrossini.typepad.com/mon_weblog/2006/02/lift06_levier_c.html#comment-13756819

    “The release was not planned. We were NOT ready, and are in trouble ever since. As Scoble explained he asked me what I was doing and I ended up showing cocomment to him and those present at the chalet. Scoble liked it, and the rest is history.”

  3. Lee Says:
    February 16th, 2006 at 10:57 pm

    Thanks for the update, Stephanie. Much needed clarity on a hot topic at the moment.

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