Rethinking Blog Comments
There was a time when the tools to publish online weren’t as plentiful as they are today. When everyone didn’t have a Weblog, Twitter, Facebook, etc. It was this strange, dark time when commenting first appeared.
Projects like Disqus and CoComment are trying to improve commenting - but I feel they’re still assuming we don’t already have a publication. We do. Lots of them.
Last night, Tom Elko and I dug into this topic for 2 hours and came out with some very interesting insight around re-thinking blog comments and Cullect’s current capabilities. All started from a very brief email he sent last week:
“I’ve been thinking, Culld and Cullect’s feature to publish a link with a comment to apps is probably the smartest commenting system out there for content based websites. A long thread after a post is fine, if you can get it…a discussion about the item on a reader’s social-network is waaaay better.” - Tom Elko
Feedly Asks ‘Recommend’ or ‘Share’ ?
Edwin over at Feedly asks for comments about relabeling Feedly’s ‘recommend’ feature as ’share’.
In Cullect, I’ve settled on ‘Recommend’ because - unlike other feed aggregators/readers/thingys - all reading lists in Cullect are public by default. So, here, everything is automatically, ’shared’ (even ‘hidden’ items) and ‘recommend’ makes the most sense.
Cullect Serves Publishers Too.
Exactly. From the beginning, I wanted Cullect to be useful to feed publishers as well as their readers.
There are a number of ways it’s doing that now,:
- Readers can donate a percentage of their monthly Cullect subscription to their favorite blogger, podcaster, writer, publisher (yes, these donations directly impact a feed’s important ranking).
- The Cullect Robot says which reading lists a feed is in and any monthly donation amount.
- Cullect Feed Stats widget can display a feeds most important items or it’s recommended items.
- Cullect recognizes comments-url tag and links to the original feed item.
Cullect’s Eponymous Features
Just like that deli down the street that names its sandwiches after the celebrities that have dined there, Cullect has a handful of features inspired by someone special:
- The Arik Jones: Authentication and posting to Tumblr.com
- The Dave Slusher: Link spidering
- The Hugh MacLeod: iPhoto-compatible RSS feeds
- The Peter Fleck: Authentication and posting to Blogger.com
Thank you all.
Big Train Update
I’m postponing the release of Cullect.com - Big Train for a week while I revisit some of the UI decisions in the /profile section.
Until then, here’s a screenshot of the new reading list page. In the Flickr Notes, I’ve called out a few major things that are different. There are at least 5 more changes you can see if you’re familiar with Cullect.com
1 Week Until ‘Big Train to Hollywood’ Leaves the Station
Progress on the next major release of Cullect is going pretty smoothly with just a week to go. That also means the To Do list is getting shorter.
Here’s a quick run down of what you can expect on July 16th:
- Integration with 7 more web services including corresponding keyboard shortcuts
- Cleaned up and simplified interface.
- Greater flexibility in:
- sorting the items in your reading list.
- presentation of your reading list.
- the data displayed in the Feed Stats widget.
Cullect is as Much a Feature as an App
This week I had 2 great conversations with organizations about integrating Cullect into their services and platforms. These conversations inspire me - and they seem to inspire those on the other side of the table as well.
From the very beginning of development, I’ve seen Cullect less of a distinct destination (MapQuest) and more of an engine (NAVTEQ). In Cullect today, evidence of this perspective is all around (i.e. the sparse UI). In fact, the most requested features are responses to this engine-perspective.
Long term, I see Cullect still standing on it’s own as it does today. I also see Cullect as the underlying engine for sharing feeds within a number of services and platforms.
Drop me a line if you’re interested in integrating Cullect into your existing systems. Especially if you or someone like you is on the Cullect 1000 list.
Encouraging the Resistance
via NewsGang, I got this great post from Jacob Sloan on why he hasn’t signed up for FriendFeed yet. He identifies a number of issues, each one Cullect is designed to minimize or solve completely.
Me neither. Cullect was built on the assumptions that; you’d rather not have yet-another-name-and-password to remember, you currently have an account that can be used to uniquely identify you, and well, you’re at least as lazy as I am.
Jacob on comment silos:
“With FriendFeed, my posts collect their own comments in various places that never ping back to my blog. These comments are never shared with regular readers.”
While I touched on this in the Comment Silo post, this is one of the benefits of the ’send to; blog, twitter, tumblr’ feature of Cullect. This spreads the meme, rather than keeping it hostage.
He continues with issue of context and distinct social groups
“I maintain a pretty unified social presence across all services, but for those who do not, connections originally from one social media service might be bored or offended by your social actions and blogging within another service.”
So many services (esp. feed readers) assume I want everything in one big pile and that I want to share the same info with everyone. That’s a recipes for information overload and spamming-you-’friends’.
Think of Meetup.com or 37Signals’ Basecamp, while there may be the same names and faces across the different groups and projects you’re a member of, it’s not assumed nor is it expected. Cullect is designed for sharing your different reading lists with the different groups of people in your life, not everything to everyone.
Say ‘Thank$ for the Blog’ with Your Cullect.com Membership
After talking about the feed support aspect of Cullect.com in a demo yesterday, the response was:
“You’re not really giving the feeds money.”
Yes. Yes, I am. In fact, I contacted feed publisher today about how to pass along a Cullect.com member’s donation to them.
I’ve also made it easy for publishers to see their stats including donations. It’s both the feed stats widget and the Cullect.com Robot’s Message, of course - you’ll also see it in your PayPal account.
As I’ve mentioned before, supporting the publishers you enjoy reading increases their importance within your reading lists and everyone else’s.
So, if you like Minneapoliscast, join Cullect.com and give a percentage of your membership back to Tony.
Cullect is Not a Comment Silo
You’ve probably noticed, Cullect doesn’t ask you to create a new account to use it. It assumes you write on a weblog (or Twitter, or Tumblr) and that you want to continue.
This means when you read something worth writing about in any Cullect.com reading list (whether you’re a curator or not) it’s easy to publish to your weblog (or Twitter, or Tumblr).
Now there may be cases where you’d prefer to write a comment on the article’s originating website rather than your own. Some feeds publish the url for each article’s comments in the comments tag. This is the ‘Comments’ link sometimes available in an article’s footer. Click that link and you’ll be sent to the article’s comment form.
Whether your reaction is published on the original site or your own, Cullect tries its best to connect them. Making it easy for everyone to follow the conversation, wherever it lives. It just doesn’t live here.