Written on May 6, 2008 – 3:10 pm
Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten,
We have just installed a new WordPress plug-in that allows readers to tag their own comments. The tags are hosted on the Commentag.com server and do not interfere with your search ranking or existing comment infrastructure. It is simply an add on with some functionality to make it easier to sort through comments. Although the company has launched in early April they haven’t done any marketing until now.
The service was started by three friends; Xavier Damman (24), Arnaud Coomans (25) and Olaf Witkowski (24). Two of them live in London and one works from Belgium.
From the Commentag blog: “The idea came to my mind with a blog I created about 4×4. It fostered many comments and a journalist who wanted to know the most common arguments (either for or against SUV). Unable to provide a quick answer, we imagined a system which could deal with that particular issue.”
So they came up with a simple tool to Tag comments and a Tag cloud to quickly navigate comments. So now, when you think a post sucks you can leave a comment and tag your comment: ‘Sucks’. The next commenter will be presented with a suggestionbox for tags and one of them will be ‘Sucks’. He can then choose to include the ‘Sucks’ tag in his comment too. Or maybe he will use ‘Brilliant’.
Someone reading the post and wanting to find out how many negative comments there are can then click the ‘Sucks’ tag in the tagcloud and all comments that aren’t tagged ‘Sucks’ will be hidden. Then you can deselect the ‘Sucks’ tag and highlight all the posts tagged ‘Brilliant’.
For blogs that receive dozens of comments on each post this will be a great way to add some sense to their comments section. Being able to quickly look at all positive VS negative posts could be a great tool for reader and possibly stimulate them to comment even more.
We will be testing the Commentag plug-in here and look forward to getting a lot of tagged comments on this post.
I hope you like that post!
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Written on April 10, 2008 – 8:30 am
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
Every week we publish an interview with a start-up. We ask five questions, hoping the answers will give you inspiration and new views.
This time we’re interviewing Sam Desimpel, founder of IntroNiche.com. That’s a Belgium-based start-up which helps webmasters and bloggers to find a match for cross-promotion. I absolutely dig this idea, since cross-promoting is a perfect way to reach your target audience…, without spending any money! It reminds me of the good old days in high school, when I owned a humor site and asked other humor webmasters to exchange links. Well, I’ve grown up, and so has the Internet. Read the interview to get to know how it look likes according to Desimpel.
How did you come up with the idea of IntroNiche?
“I used to work at eBay. I had to find low budget and credible ways for eBay to attract clients in various collectibles niches such as stamps, coins, toys, comics and so on. Indeed, eBay also doesn’t like to spend on marketing unless it has to.
The solution was usually a cross-promotion deal between eBay and a local collectibles tradefair and magazine. eBay would eg. promote the tradefair in it’s newsletter and the tradefair would give eBay visibility and a free stand on the fair. They were good win-win deals and I loved doing them.
Finding these deals however took a lot of time. So I wanted to make cross-promotion easier by creating a classifieds marketplace for cross-promotion. IntroNiche’s only purpose is to allow easier cross-promotion for freelancers and small companies.” (more…)
Written on March 19, 2008 – 1:01 pm
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
Start-up rallies can be disastrous. Take the start-up rally at Le Web 3 for example. They had installed a start-up dock over there, which was a nice place to rest for most attendees. On top of that, the jury consisted of a few ‘I’m playing with my Blackberry’-guys. So the entrepreneurs saw a disinterested crowd and turned really nervous. I couldn’t watch it.
Here at PLUGG it’s totally different. Start-ups present on the main stage in two rally’s of ten companies. They only have two minutes, short ‘n’ sweet, and were encouraged to ‘act excited’, since if they aren’t excited about their own product, who will? That’s what I’m talking about!
The guys from Bragster really got the point. It’s a service on which friends can dare each other to something incredibly stupid. And it works, the people and the press love it. Moreover, rapper 50 cent is registered as well. What more can you ask for?
One of the team members of the French Bragster team challenged his colleague Niko to ‘throw a pie in Bertrand’s face’. So guess what happened when the two enthusiastic guys walked up the stage? Exactly, Bertrand’s world suddenly consisted of just pie and whipped cream. The audience was stunned.
After a rally, this very same audience had the opportunity to rate the start-ups. I won’t be surprised when Bragster really gained some points just by bringing the idea of their very fun start-up into practice.
Update: There you have it: Bragster is one of the tree finalists at the Plugg startup rally.
More about the other start-ups in the upcoming weeks, that’s a promise!
Written on March 19, 2008 – 9:09 am
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
Boris, Robert and me just arrived at the fancy Hotel Plaza in Brussels for ‘a European perspective on Web 2.0′. If the Wifi connection survives - it looks pretty good right now - we’ll cover this event for you. It’s up to TechCrunch UK’s Mike Butcher to now open the event - which is called Plugg by the way, while everybody is still having their regular conference breakfast: croissants and coffee.
After that, Rebecca Jennings from Forrester Research will address Social Computing in Europe in her keynote. To know what happens then, have a look at the schedule. If you have any requests about covering, or you want us to ask a certain question, give us a shout on Twitter.
Updates:
Butcher opening the conference by walking into the public, asking who people are
More photos by Robert or Ernst-Jan
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