2006 Trends Part I: Comment Search
There's a ton of bloggers making 2006 predictions in the blogosphere this week. Two notable ones were opined by Jason Calacanis and John Battelle. I am not here to predict, more to observe. So over the next 10 days (by now you know I like that number), I am going to talk about the most important online trends to watch in 2006. Each day will bring with it a new trend in your RSS reader. As usual, I will look at them through the lens of a confessed marketer, while also maintaining a broader horizon.
The first trend covers how we search consumer generated content. The year 2005 was the year of the blog search engine. Interest in blog mining grew so much that it became something that every major search company felt compelled to provide, even Google. It was no longer the domain of the “insiders,†e.g. just those who blog. Everyday netizens became interested in tapping into the blogosphere's vast mindreading power, perhaps none more so than marketers.
As traffic to blog search engines grew, there was a ton of innovation. Everyone felt compelled to keep up with Technorati. Some, like Ice Rocket, did a fairly good job. Others, like Blogdigger and Feedster, didn't and today they feel largely like dead men walking.
Still, shockingly, every single blog search engine is missing out on the next great opportunity. They're focusing solely on searching blogs. They're building great tools for bloggers, but they're failing to recognize that what we all need is a way to search the entire conversation. This is where the blog search war will be fought in the months ahead.
The high end vendors like Intelliseek get this, but others don't. The gang of four - Technorati, PubSub, Google and Ice Rocket - continue to pile on the features for mining blogs, as they seemingly ignore what will be the next great land grab - mining comments.
Blog comments have perhaps more collective wisdom inside them than any other form of consumer generated content. However, as of today, there's essentially no way to mine them. Who's going to help us here? Will it be Google, Yahoo, Technorati or Ice Rocket? Or will some great new search engine come along and change the game. Tune in this time next year.
Technorati Tags: blogs, comments, Feedster, Google, IceRocket, PubSub, Technorati, Yahoo
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Steve, no one, if they take their business seriously, spends that much time playing "catch up" with someone else. Rather than try to mimic others, we continue to focus on innovation. For example, this year we grew usage of our Media Search and our new Blogdigger Local search applications, in terms of users, clients and partnerships. And we've got more new stuff on the way for 2006. When I wake up in the morning my chief concern is how to best serve our users, partners and clients, not how to "catch up" with some other service. I'm not sure what gives you the impression that we're out of the game; from my perspective, things have never been busier.
I do agree about the comment/conversation tracking; we experimented with adding comment feeds into Blogdigger back in 2004, but held back because at the time, comment feeds were rife with comment spam. I think big innovations in comment tracking needs to occur in the aggregator as well; the folks at FeedLounge are looking into this. As for how it fits into a search engine, that's an entirely different question.
Posted by: Greg Gershman | Friday, December 23, 2005 at 12:33 AM
Steve and Greg, I agree that blog comments are a great resource that someone ought to mine and organize for our searching delight. I'm still frustrated at the inconsistency of blog comments - some sites don't allow them, most sites don't allow you to receive follow-up alerts when further comments are made, some don't allow HTML tags, etc. But I also agree that there's a hoard of largely untapped wisdom in the blog commentosphere (I did not just say that!).
If I could make a humble 2006 prediction, I'd say that I think some websites/blogs will stand out because they enhance their conversations by making it easier for people to meet up and share information at their sites. Maybe that will mean the introduction of all sorts of new mashups (imagine if I could engage in a live video chat with you both right now in front of any visitors to the site, for example), but I look forward to seeing what transpires. I'm just a beginner (two months blogging), but I'm as excited as you are to see what 2006 brings.
Posted by: Easton Ellsworth | Friday, December 23, 2005 at 11:43 AM
Steve, you recently blogged about a Firefox extention that follows the conversation by giving you a little window into comments.
I have found it is a great tool to see if bloggers are connecting to your/or others Web page and what they are saying.
It is also a convenient way to quickly go to those pages and post comments.
Posted by: Kami Huyse | Friday, December 23, 2005 at 04:21 PM
A great web2.0 review map is available right here :
http://webosphere.wordpress.com/2005/12/26/web20-applications-and-services-map/
Posted by: webosphere | Monday, December 26, 2005 at 04:03 AM
Steve,
Have you seen Commentosphere?
http://comment.ning.com/
It is a ning app designed to allow a user to bookmark comments that he / she leaves on blogs. These can then be sorted / viewed by tag / author etc. The next step there is to streamline / semi-automate the import process. That way comments that are "geographically" disparate can be pulled together and viewed in one place.
Posted by: John | Tuesday, December 27, 2005 at 05:55 PM
Steve,
This is a great line: "Blog comments have perhaps more collective wisdom inside them than any other form of consumer generated content."
This is not 'the answer' but one new way i have been using Clipmarks is to tag specific comments that i read and/or post on blogs.
This is the only way that i know of to easily retain and retrieve specific comments i find in the blogosphere.
Typically, i go through my clipped comments once per day and click the source link to see if any new comments have been posted.
If you get a chance to try using Clipmarks for that reason i'd love to know what you think.
eric
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This one should be of interest for you:
http://www.cocomment.com
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3246-0233-9149
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