Written on July 1, 2008 – 9:01 pm Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
Although most people are slowly getting used to the idea of Web 2.0, the third version of the web is knocking on our doors. The last couple of years, we’ve embraced the wisdom of crowds - inviting anyone to create content and guide us through the web. Yet now most of us feel it’s time to manage that overabundance of content and ask for experts to give us a hand while discovering the web. With experts I mean people who have proved to know more than average about a certain subject. Call them mavens if you want. Mahalo and Topicle are examples of services who already embraced these people, Swiss conversations online tracker coComment is about to do the same.
Matt Colebourne at The Next Web conference
For those of you who don’t know what coComment is, CEO Matt Colebourne has sent me a short summary of what they do: “The core functionality of coComment is to enable users in managing their conversations across the web. Additionally, users can utilize coComment in discovering conversations they want to participate in or people they want to follow, as we track over 17 million conversations across 280,000 sites.”
The discovering part, that’s where the experts come in. The new community features include ranking and rating of comments by user and by tag to make it easy to find specific conversations or people. “This”, says the press release, “enables the best conversations, rather than simply the most prolific, to become much more visible and accessible”. So coComment users can qualify comments based on the reputation of the commenter. Therefore, people can find the best discussions and conversation by following certain people who function as conversation leaders, simply because they add the most value to a discussion.
A nice extra for bloggers and publicists is that they can check whether visitors like the discussions about their publications. This way, coComment offers us more insight in the value of the much-discussed phenomenon of online conversations.
I hope you like that post!
The Next Web Blog covers start-up news from all over the world (not just the Valley), exciting new technologies and inspiring entrepreneurs. If you're new here, you may want to read our 'About' page and subscribe to our RSS feed.
Do you have a start-up that we should write about? Contact us! Thanks for visiting and hope you come back again!
Written on June 18, 2008 – 8:57 pm Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
One of the last sessions at Supernova 2008 was about “liquid conversations” - the discussions flow away from their original source to services like Friendfeed and Facebook. Dave McClure (500 Hats) moderated the panel of David Sifry (Technorati), Bret Taylor (FriendFeed), Matt Colebourne (CoComment), and Loic Le Meur (Seesmic). I’m not sure McClure knew in advance that this would be not easy as he thought it would be. Here’s what happened.
Each panelist introduced himself and the service he was representing. After some regular introductions by Sifry, Taylor, Colebourne, it was up to Le Meur. He decided to pitch Seesmic by showing a video about the… infamous g-spot. The video was compiled of video replies by Seesmic users from ten different countries and a sex expert - the hilarious type. Here’s the video.
The video was welcomed with several rounds of laughing, although I did noticed some people were a bit shocked. Yes, that’s what happens when the French arrive. Some prejudices are actually based on something.
Valleywag reporter Melissa Gira - “Reporter, Bad Girl, Sex Nerd For Hire” - asked a good question about the video - after answering a question about g-spots. She wondered why Seesmic invites an expert to the video, when the service is all about the conversations of their users. Loic didn’t really give an answer, so I will: It’s a great marketing tool to turn the comments into a show and spice it up with a typical weird sex expert.
Now over to the liquid conversations
Enough for the sex part now, as McClure raised an interesting question about online conversations. They’re flowing away from their original source to places like Facebook, Friendfeed, and Twitter. Friendfeed users aren’t commenting on a New York Times article on the site itself, but express their opinion in Friendfeed. They find like-minded friends there, instead of the railing crowd at the New York Times page. The same thing happens with discussions on blogs - to the discontent of some bloggers. (more…)
Written on May 29, 2008 – 1:01 pm Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
At several of the conferences I visited this year, I saw Matt Colebourne from CoComment on stage, telling business people to participate in the online conversations. Rather than just ignoring or hiding from them, companies should surprise the bloggers and their readers by showing them that they’re listening.
Some companies really get this. When co-editor Patrick and me had a bad travel experience with Venere, Renée De Meo from the booking site responded to my blog post and proved it was the mistake of the hotel. That’s the kind of alertness a company’s communications division needs.
So tracking blog posts is fairly simple, you either use a service like CoComment or Google Alerts. But how do you follow the thousands of discussions on Twitter? The conversations there are almost as influential as the ones in the blogosphere, as Nate Elliot proved during the Next08 conference. TweetScan and Summize probably look a bit too obscure for your average communications manager, but a new Get Satisfaction service might help the companies out.
The support-experts from Get SatisfactiondevelopedOverheard, a feature that discovers what customers are saying about a given company on Twitter. On top of that, they make it fairly simple for not so savvy people to respond quickly. And if you’re familiar with Get Satisfaction, you’ll know the design is customizable to the max (take a look at the FAQ page of our sponsor Wakoopa to see what I mean).
Although participating in conversation is of the utmost importance for companies - bloggers, Twitter users, and readers are still happily surprised when you actually do so. You’ll really make an impression, so consider to give Get Satisfaction and similar services a try. It’s time to embrace the 2.0 mind set.
Written on February 8, 2008 – 4:56 pm Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
A few weeks ago I interviewed Matt Colebourne. He’s the CEO of coComment, a service that makes it possible to keep track of all the comments you make and discussions you’re participating in. Today he captured the attention of 700 LIFT08 attendees when he spoke about the importance of social networking and conversations for companies and bloggers.
Colebourne is the kind of speaker that grabs your attention and won’t let go. “Who’s stressed?” he asked the audience in enthusiastic way, “Don’t worry, I’m here to make you feel good”. He then asked us to imagine that we’re the marketing director of a big brand. “You have a pleasant life, everybody thinks you’re brilliant.” Well, you can guess where this is going. In comes the angry visitor who leaves an ugly comment on the website. It gets picked up and the social media train is gathering steam. Before you know it, the comment ended up on the Digg frontpage. What happened?!
“Opinions are everywhere, people are saying what they want. Whether you like it or not. Trouble is here”, Colebourne said. “Markets ARE conversations, you can view that as trouble or you can engage, excite and use it yourself.” Some more one liners by Colebourne: “Listen to the good, the bad and the ugly” and “Interaction sometimes make your brand more memorable”. And his most important message: “You cannot control, keep talking and listening, don’t be scared”.
“You cannot control, keep talking and listening, don’t be scared”
So to sum it up, Colebourne urges companies and organizations to participate in online conversations, instead of running way from them. It’s a message that would do pretty well at a regular marketing event, yet I think that most LIFT08 visitors were already aware of this revolution. I mean, everybody has read the corporate blogging book Naked Conversations by Robert Scoble - who was sitting front row by the way.
Colebourne is a gifted speaker and I really like coComment, but next time I hope his presentation is inspirational because of the content itself, and not just for the way that he presents it.
Written on January 10, 2008 – 8:11 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. Well, actually six questions, since we also ask the start-up to who he or she is passing the mic.
This week’s start-up is coComment, a service that makes it possible to keep track of all the comments and discussions your are participating in or observing on the web. Moreover, if you’re a blogger, you can publish the comments you’re making throughout the blogosphere. The company is based in Geneva, Switzerland. They’re funded by Swisscom Innovations. We’re interviewing Matt Colebourne, CEO of coComment.
How did you guys come up with the idea for coComment?
“It was our CSO, Nicolas Dengler, who came up with it. He found that as the number of blogs grew it became absolutely impossible to keep track with the comments he was leaving. At first, it was just a simple proof of concept idea, but after discussions with a number of prominent bloggers it was launched at the Lift Conference. Yet, still as an early stage idea.
The response was so fantastic that the imperative became to found a company and to build a product that was robust, general and generic enough that it was applicable not only to the blogger community, but also to the increasingly large number of users commenting on general media sites.
Nicolas and the technology team came up with the new, social coComment. Based on a number of workshops and advice both internal and external and feedback from our users. coComment 2.0 Beta release was buggy and not very well received. Though quickly thereafter we were able to refine it into the award-winning product that we now offer.” (more…)
Written on July 1, 2008 – 9:01 pm
Colebourne is the kind of speaker that grabs your attention and won’t let go. “Who’s stressed?” he asked the audience in enthusiastic way, “Don’t worry, I’m here to make you feel good”. He then asked us to imagine that we’re the marketing director of a big brand. “You have a pleasant life, everybody thinks you’re brilliant.” Well, you can guess where this is going. In comes the angry visitor who leaves an ugly comment on the website. It gets picked up and the social media train is gathering steam. Before you know it, the comment ended up on the Digg frontpage. What happened?!
“It was our CSO, 
Email
Facebook
Netlog
Linkedin
The Next Web Blog is closely associated with The Next Web Conference which is held annually in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. At this event speakers from all over the world come together to talk about, and show of, the future of the Web. (
