I want links, you want links, everybody wants links! Now, there is a new way to give each other even more links: Use coComment!
What is coComment?
CoComment is a comment tracking service. You can install their toolbar; afterwards when you leave a comment on a blog, that comment thread will be logged on your coComment account.
The main function of this service is to permit you to keep track of conversations on blogs. It’s pretty handy for that- I sometimes forget where I left a comment. Later, I want to go back and read any reaction. But. . . I forgot where the conversation took place!
How does coComment create Links?
When you leave a comment at a blog, a link to that blog is created on your profile page. (Oh, you can also evidently follow conversations without leaving a comment. That creates a link as well, and it’s pretty handy!)
Anyone can click those links to find blogs where I posted comments. Eventually, if your friends join,they can click your links to follow conversations you found. Plus, people can search on tags to find conversations about topics of interest. You can also create groups (I created knitting. I may need to invite people!)
So, clearly, coComment creates links to the blogs you comment on.
What kind of links does it create?
Pretty good ones! Matt Jones at blogging fingers noticed Technorati counts them toward rank! He also says these links are on PR 4 pages, but I don’t see that rank on my toolbar.
Can I avoid giving links to people I disapprove of?
Yes. You will be can blacklist site and prevent those comment threads from appearing on your coComment account. With the toolbar, you’ll see a link to “blacklist”. Click that, make some choices and save.
So, how can I get myself links?
That’s obvious: get your commenters to join coComment! Then they can leave comments to your blog.
What should I do now?
Go sign up for coComment. They have very nice step by step features that will tell you how to install the co-comment toolbar. Install it.
Then, skip their instructions to test at their blog. Come back here and leave a comment at my blog and tell me you joined. (Then I can dash off and make you a friend, which seems to have some benefits for both of us.)
Oh, and remember, my comments are dofollow. So once you’ve left at least three comments, your links get followed. Plus now, by using coComment, you return the favor and I get a link. 
Afterwards, return to coComment, and check your account. You’ll see a link to this conversation at co-comment, you can follow the full comment thread over there. Of course, if someone responds to your comment, and you want to respond to them, you still need to return here to comment. That would be more traffic for me.
But I bet you’re still wondering how you can get links for your blog? Well, you leave comments at your own blogs, right? You’ll only get one link per post, and your coComment profile can only give 1 vote to your blog profile, but still, a link’s a link. Then, also get your friends to join- and comment at your blog. And, heck, why not become dofollow and publicize that?
If you are a WordPress blog, it’s easy to dofollow. Just get L’s Linky Love, install. It works out of the box, but you can also make some choices that help you discourage human comment spammers.
Afterwards, publicize your do-follow status by joining Tricia’s dofollow list and Bumpzee’s dofollow group.
Let me asure you, you’ll get comments! And the dofollowers are a savvy group. So, you’ll probably like a lot of their comments.
Summary of coComment
I think the service will be handy because I know I lose track of conversations I want to follow. Sometimes I can’t remember the blog I visited and just drop out for that reason. Plus, sometimes, I’d like my friends to be able to find some blogs where I left comments. The extra links are a bonus.
We used cocomment for awhile when it first came out on one of our blogs. Overall consensus was it was a good idea but it needed work. Hopefully they’ve cleared up some of the issues like the red x syndrome linked in my signature above by now.
I’d rather use the email notification to follow-up, on new comments assuming there is an option to escape a thread when/if the comment threads go off-topic or the trolls and spammers come sniffing around.
And BTW, you might want to check your email notification script. I received three emails when I left my first comment. One that welcomed me for leaving my first comment here and advertised your WordPress blog plugins (unexpected promotion). And two other ones with your above response.
I just received two more emails from my last comment. We only need one email, not two for notification
Something is amiss.
Five emails when only two were expected and desired. Definitely something to look into.
It’s turning out to be a bit of a mare this
Any idea how you post to the forums? All I can seem to do is read them.
I am encountering the inability to claim my blogs even though I’ve followed the instructions to the letter! I hit “synchronize” and CC just keeps coming back with “no blogs claimed”.
Maybe it will work tomorrow…..
Great idea. I just started an account (dragonden) and put in a friend request on there for you. Claiming my cocomment page via my technorati account seems to have gone smoothly. I haven’t posted in hours though so it’s not showing any of my posts in my blogs area on cocomments.
I will have to have another look.
The Technorati claiming was actually something I prompted them to do some time ago and the implementation was much better than I expected.
I had people complain about the plugin on my blog a couple of time so I had to remove it, and on a plugin clearout in Firefox it didn’t make it back.
I really should add it, as long as they have finally managed to fix commenting on blogspot and Digg, which just got insane.
What also wasn’t very good was the way they picked up a post title as the name of a blog. Every post in coComments for my blog last time I looked used the blog name “WordPress Trademark Spammers” which was a thread on my blog where I first commented back in November last year.
Tdavid you do have a point, but as far as I am concerned legally at least a blog owner has a right to send a single direct email thanking you for a first comment, though if it has some kind of promotion in it then maybe it should also include contact details.
Subscribe by Email by default doesn’t really comply with CANSPAM because commercial spam can be sent very easily, all it takes is a commenter dropping an affiliate link.
I wrote a patch some time ago to add some additional text to it.
Feedburner also doesn’t comply, but they are owned by Google now so I doubt that will ever be fixed.
The more I think about this, perhaps it would be better to program the thank you for leaving your first comment so that it wasn’t even necessary to send a completely separate email?
Just mod the subscribe to comments plugin for this extra message after the very first comment is left. Using a separate plugin doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, does it? Other than for convenience to the blogger maybe? Or for the more cynical: marketing.
In this day and age, I think it’s wise to send only what people agree to receive via email. It was more acceptable to do more of this kind of stuff in the past and not set off whistles and bells. In the situation with the email notification there is no mention that there will be any other email sent. It creates unnecessary and, as I think in this case, unwarranted and undeserved suspicion.
Different subject: the most recent comments all have (new comment) after our names (and the links are all nofollow). Was a plugin that counted comments reset or something?
Naturally I knew I wasn’t leaving a link (still not because way up at the top my first link is still nofollow) and nofollow not applying to me directly, but for example I was curious about why Andy’s link was nofollow and the Knitting Fiend’s trackback, plus the redundancy of the message after our names (new comment). Isn’t it obvious it’s a “new comment?” Am I missing something?
And why would someone want a 24 hour time toggle on nofollow on the comments left? Are they not moderating the first comments or something?
I do understand and respect as a fellow plugin author adding features that users like, so I’m not criticizing why that feature is in your plugin, but this just seems like a really silly, useless feature to me as a webmaster. What am I missing?
Frankly, I think some people are getting way too complicated with how they’re using nofollow. Either give it to people or don’t. Don’t make it some kind of obstacle course to navigate to get it. If the same type of effort was put into making the site content quality better as to what links are and aren’t getting nofollowed imagine what the reader response would be like?
This is the part of NoFollow that has troubled me since day one. That it would be used for situations it wasn’t intended. When it came out there was no talk about it using it on text link ads, but over the last year that’s been all the talk. It remains no surprise to me that it’s done absolutely zero to combat spam. It’s just made it worse because now people like those of us who are dofollowing links have even bigger targets on our sites.
I understand the need and importance of moderating comments, and as a site gets bigger the need for a comment policy, but the search engines aren’t going to freak out at your site if on spider pass #7,357 you have a link nofollow and then on #7358 it’s dofollow. Sure, if you link to bad neighborhoods you can be punished but that should be part of normal comment moderation. Just disallow those types of links altogether, don’t nofollow them, just remove them period.
The goal should be to spread the love to those who leave legitimate, on topic comments and thus encourage and promote making the content of the site better and more useful for current and future readers/visitors.
Ok I’m in! Thanks for the info.
This is very cool! I’ve already got mine all set up, plus I’m a member of the bumpzee dofollow group and I’ve asked to Tricia to add me on her list as well. Yeah!
Darn it, I forgot I had to first click on the cocomment thingy in my toolbar before….I sent the comment. sigh…..
I have had CoComment several days now and I find that it really slows things down when I want to make a comment.
Cool idea. I will download the coComment to give it a try now …
[...] been hearing about coComment here and there for a while now. I had been planning on taking a look and giving it a shot but I just [...]