Where’s the discussion?
Over the years, two things have bothered me about blogs.
1. They’re chronological to a fault. This is great if you stay on top of a blog and watch the new stuff as it appears. It’s awful if a blogger writes some really great and fairly timeless piece, especially if they write a lot. Good stuff gets buried very quickly, often never to be seen again.
2. Discussions happen all over the place in blog comments and it is extremely difficult to notice them and if you do, keep track of them.
I’ve worked on a number of community related sites and I always have these things in mind.
On Bumpzee, I’ve tried to address the disappearing post issue by helping to keep the good ones around longer, those being identified with the most ‘bumps’. These posts end up on the list of top posts and stay there for as long as they’re deemed important, either by recent bumps or recent comments. When the buzz fades away, then the story does too. In that order, which is critical. The tagging also attempts to give stories more life, removing them from the fate of disappearing off a list because they became old, and putting them in context of similar posts.
The second issue, fragmented discussions, is addressed somewhat in that discussions can happen right here at Bumpzee. Since it’s a central location for people to post comments, they stay top of mind, and the discussions have a good chance of developing.
But, since the basic item of discussion here is a blog post, their discussions can, do, and should happen right on the blogs where they are posted. It’s very difficult to keep tabs on these discussions that go on all over the place. If you follow more than a dozen blogs, it’s all but impossible to keep track.
You can usually subscribe to comment feeds for a blog, but who needs MORE feeds? There is also a great service called co.mments which addresses this very issue for an individual who locates blog posts that they’re interested in keeping track of. This, however, requires that the user mark an indidual post for tracking.
But what happens so often to me is that I read a post early, often when there are no comments, the discussion picks up later and I miss it. This happened recently on Vlad’s blog. 25 posts later, I stopped by and saw that I missed the whole party.
So I’m attempting to address this on Bumpzee. Each entry may not only have comments here on BZ, but I’m building tools to keep track of which entries have comments going on at the originating blog. If there’s a good discussion going on somewhere, it deserves to be seen.
I’ve developed a new version of the widget plugin for Wordpress. It does all the hard work of reporting the number of comments back to BZ to store and show this number on the BZ entry for a given blog, like this:
Again, this functionality is only available with the new plugin, which isn’t generally available yet, but I’m about ready for some testers. Please let me know if you’d like the new plugin code.
February 11th, 2007 at 11:05 pm
Scott,
I think you will never stop to amaze us BumpZee users with your creativity. I am sorry you’ve missed the “party”. I am ready to try the new plugin!
February 12th, 2007 at 2:53 am
Happy to test and this is truly unique functionality for any bookmarking service (heh you should patent it)
February 12th, 2007 at 4:56 am
I think this is a great idea Scott. I’m loving bumpzee but I was thinking last week that it’s a shame that a post started a discussion on bumpzee and on my blog but that the two threads didn’t overlap. Anything I can help test to improve this would be great.
BTW - how many hours a day are you developing bumpzee?
February 12th, 2007 at 5:38 am
Ooh, neat. I’ll give the plugin a try..
February 12th, 2007 at 8:24 am
That is looking really good Jangro. I’d b happy to test the code for you.
February 12th, 2007 at 10:07 am
Scott, there’s another willing guinea pig here!
Also, is it possible to a Bumpzee to a page rather than a blog entry? I’ve had a play around but not had any success yet.
February 12th, 2007 at 10:38 am
>> BTW - how many hours a day are you developing bumpzee?
All of them.
>> Also, is it possible to a Bumpzee to a page rather than a blog entry?
Not sure I’m following you here, but I’ll ask in email when sending the widget code.
February 12th, 2007 at 10:51 am
Count me in as well.
February 12th, 2007 at 11:34 am
You know that I couldn’t agree with you more on the chronological limitations of blogs and commenting, which is where the real stuff happens.
I’d love to test out for you as well.
February 12th, 2007 at 1:15 pm
Thanks Scott - got the new plugin up and running and it’s excellent. Well done
February 12th, 2007 at 7:01 pm
You know, I’m just thankful I got away with the best blogger award this time because with you and BZ and CPN and all of these other amazing blogs we all know about now due to BZ…
It’s gonna be one really tough competition. Awesome stuff. Game on.
February 12th, 2007 at 9:22 pm
Got it installed without a hitch. Works great!
Two things. I’d like more options. I’d like a field on the options page to have thumbs and name text, or just thumbs. I’d like to be able to select how many recent readers to show, and I’d like to be able to have multiple columns within the widget.
Having three columns of ten thumbs for instance instead of just four in one column with the name next to them.
I’ll post to my blog soon about the why!
February 12th, 2007 at 9:59 pm
I’ve updated the plugin to allow you to configure the number of entries and visitors. Sorry, I meant to put that in before releasing it.
You’ll need to download the plugin again from the same location.
The instructions on the config page are updated as well.
I’ll look for your further feedback on your blog.
thanks.
February 13th, 2007 at 8:26 am
Scott,
Which of the gadget will track the comments from your blog. Is is a sidebar widget or bumpzee plugin?
February 13th, 2007 at 1:35 pm
either the ‘bump this’ widget or the recent visitors & top entries widget will track comments.
You need to have the latest wordpress widget installed, which I emailed you the location.
There’s actually a more recent version, which I’ll send you an email about in a bit.
February 14th, 2007 at 12:46 am
Thanks Scott,
I am guessing common snese (whish I lack often) would tell you that before installing the new bumpzee widget you should uninstall the old one. Well ate least in my case I had to remove the old one or I was gatting one of those crazy errors.
Anyway, new widget is on my blog, configured and all. Thanks alot!
February 14th, 2007 at 6:40 am
yes, you cannot have them both activated at the same time.
Glad it is working.
February 14th, 2007 at 11:08 am
[...] « Where’s the discussion? [...]
February 16th, 2007 at 7:33 pm
Hot. How do you do the visitor cloud? I’m not as smart as I look, and couldn’t figure it out from the widgets page.