I've converted my blog comments to Typepad Connect. What prompted this was the longheld desire to replace my blog comments with FriendFeed conversations tied to each blog entry. At first I tried to do this with Disqus, which has FriendFeed integration. However, the Disqus documentation hasn't kept up with changes to Typepad (Individual Archives tempate has changed). Currently Typepad-FriendFeed integration isn't available, but I believe it will happen.
A strength of blog comments has always been the ability for each blog owner to set their own comment moderation policy and enforce it. Clay Shirky pointed out how this encapsulation was helpful in fending off spam.
But as blogs rose in attention, comment systems began to tie themselves together. Think anti-spam networks like Akismet. But more heralding was the rise of TrackBacks, which strung together blog posts as comments. A trackback was a way of commenting and sharing at the same time, through forward links.
Then the social web swung towards realtime. With the rise of Twitter, people were commenting and sharing elsewhere, and faster. But today, conversations on the web are fragmented. People are commenting and sharing at the same time in a very decentralized manner (however across disturbingly centralized services). This creates opportunities for bridge builders, whether as new web services or in new clients.
Read this RWW interview The Man Who Made Gmail Says Real-Time Conversation is What's Next and you get a sense of how the Realtime web is evolving. If you use FriendFeed, you probably have noticed a significant update in usage and following since their redesign. What is powerful about FriendFeed's conversation model is how it is integrated and object-centric. What would be powerful is if through standards we could have conversations around any object, on any service, on any device, at any time -- while retaining context.
So, I figure these things will become integrated soon enough. And all the above was just an excuse for me to test my new comments.
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