A new web application for social media users just hit the e-block. Commentful is a simple and useful service that lets social media users keep track of comments on a variety of publishing platforms. The attraction of Commentful is that you don’t have to be a blogger to use it – you don’t even have to leave comments to use the service. It can help you monitor conversations on everything from a WordPress blog to Digg and Flickr.
Commentful has the ability to work with many publishing platforms with comments since it keeps it simple and only informs you when there is a new comment on any post you are watching. The problem with CoComment was that it only worked with some publishing platforms since it reported not only when a comment was published but also displayed the new comments. Commentful ensures you’ll never have to subscribe to an RSS comments feed, purely to see if Joe replied on that one post, again.
Through the use of an ingenius Firefox extension, Commentful users can track any page by right clicking and adding it to their watchlist. In addition, the notification process is sped up with an orange orb that blinks when there are new comments in your watchlist. That’s it. Commentful does one thing and it does it well. For the avid blogger or blog subscriber, Commentful is a valuable service that can help manage your online life. No more will you find that cool site on digg, leave a comment and try to see if there are any new comments the next day only to find you’ve forgotten the site. Commentful has already found a use for me as I’m constantly logging into flickr to look for new comments.
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{ 23 comments… read them below or add one }
Yeah, it’s a pretty sweet service. The only thing I’d really like to see is a slightly more obvious indicator of whether or not a page is actually compatible. From what I’ve seen, you can add any old page and it’ll successfully be added, even if it’s _not_ compatible or there’s no comments on the page at all!.
I’d rather have it outright tell me when I try to add a page that it’s not compatible. I’ve tested a few Weblogs, Inc blogs for example, and even though it adds them they just sit in the watchlist with “0″ comments.
Of course, for sites where you know it’ll work it’s an absolute godsend. It’ll definitely be integrated into my routine from now on. :)
I have been using it for over a week and it is a great tool.
I never really got on with CoComment either, hopefully this will be better
Hello people,
In reply to Ryan’s comment, Commentful will be alerting you of compatibility issues on the pages you track. I am already working on it.
Have a nice time.
Regards,
Kailash Nadh
I have been using it too and it is very useful!
Oh, hey — thanks Kailash. :)
I actually left a similar comment over on the official blog; didn’t realise you checked around here too!
Mate, this is why I read your blog Paul.
You keep introducting me to apps that make my life easier. Keep up the great work.
Jeff in Oz
What I love about this and several of the web apps out recently is how they help you be more productive with your time and make life easier. In this case I don’t have to manually go back and check all of those pages I want to check.
Apps that makes your life easier…. I love it!
I recently wrote a quick round up of the available comment tracking services on my site. Commentful does look promising although my current favourite is co.mments as this service provides a single aggregated RSS feed that follows all your tracked conversations so rather than being “interupted” each time there’s a new comment, you can look at them all when you fire up your newsreader. I believe Commentful is adding an RSS feed soon though?…
I gave Commentful a spin last week after reading a review over at Solution Watch. Unfrotunately, it was short-lived. Upon restarting Firefox after installing the extension, I discovered all my toolbars were reset. Not sure if the Commentful extension was directly to blame, but it was the only change I had made since I started Firefox. Needless to say, I uninstalled it and set everything back the way I had it.
Correct me if I’m wrong, so Commentful is a direct replacement to subscribing to the comments RSS feed right? I’m asking because CoComment was “all over the place” (confusing) for me and I just never used it ever since.
Just registrated and installed the Firefox plugin. Will try the shit on this comment list.
Birger :)
Matt, We have since fixed that issue, it was a incompatibility issue having to do with where we were trying to place the blinker.
Hey Paul, I just realized you said you had to log into Flickr to check for comments… why don’t you just subscribe to your Flickr comment feed? I did and now I know whenever there’s a new comment right from my news reader.
I took commentful for a spin and while i liked it a lot I found to 2 things that annoy me about it.
1) I subscribed to some of the ‘conversations’ on my blog and noticed that the number of hits each page was getting just shot up. The reason is that every minute or two the pages were getting pinged to see if there were any updates. Now, I have to filter commentfuls pings out of my pageview stats.
2) That little blinking icon kept interrupting my good work time. I stopped using it for the same reason I close my email for much of the day now. To get rid of the interruption.
Just my 2 cents…. I am taking co.mments.com for a spin now.
mfer, We are working on fixing #1, and possibly even making the check time an option, so it can check at the frequency that you want it to.
As for #2, that means it is doing its job, we will probably implement some type of “work time” or quick disable / enable feature.
The orange icon is abit annoying.
Birger :)
Birger, Do you have any suggestions on how to improve it, we were just going for something that stands out, so you can’t miss it.
I recently reviews Commentful in my blog too – it’s a sweet little service, simple to use and somewhat faster than coComment.
I use it for a straight week now, and I can say that I’m very pleased.
Make the icon more like the default icons in the Firefox theme. What about making it like the green “Go” icon right to the adress bar. And maybe put a “C” letter inside it.
And you should really supply an option screen. Where there were some few options. Like the blinking. An right-click feature to turn it off would be nice. Just tap right-click and it stop blinking.
Birger :)
I concur with Birger. A smaller and more subtle indicator would be better. It doesnt even need to blink – a change of colour would suffice.
Good news fellows :)
- The blinker is now half the original size
- Doesn’t blink anymore, just a green glow
- Its no more on the nav-bar, its been moved to the status bar
- You can enable/disable the extension by right clicking
Enjoy!
Didn’t like the 3 days limit. And with coComment, the tracking is done automatically.
Birger :)