I say feed readers are for serial readers.

I would be surprised that Robert follow you on FF but do not track your blog. If he is interested by what you say, he should read your blog. But I’m probably wrong

http://fastwonderblog.com/2008/03/20/solution-to-missed-friendfeed-comments-friendfeed-comment-finder/

One great effect of FF for small blogs is that it puts your content into the feeds of people who wouldn’t see it otherwise. For example, I doubt Scoble reads here or subscribes and why would he? But since he subscribes to me on FF, he’ll see my posts there, and if he wants, he can comment, no mess, no fuss.

Plus, if he comments, my post bubbles up, and others see it and comment.

In the end, fragmentation doesn’t matter to small fish. Attention does.

What if we, in coComment, give you the possibility, as the owner of this site, to do the following:
– We track the conversation on the original post
– The site owner have the possibility to attach to this conversation any other conversations related to this post
– Someone tracking the conversation on your post will automatically track all related conversations
– The main link is still to your post
– We have “sub-links” to the related conversations so people can choose where they want to comment.
– Someone tracking just a related conversation will also see the link to the post.

What do you think ? Would you see this as helpful to follow more efficiently fragmented conversations and to keep people coming to your site ?

Thanks for your comments

A large part of blogging is engaging your audience in conversation”

You make a good point about a FF widget, and I’m hoping that will be coming soon when they release an API.

FYI: Here’s a link to the item in FriendFeed.
http://friendfeed.com/e/f7b7ec41-3343-4ab3-15a6-de5cde34bf58

The way you mention multiple conversation works for you. But I’m also interested on the comments people are leaving on your post. So I will end up tracking two conversations

And, although I’m not a blogger, I’m a big reader and sometime commenter, and, as I mentioned, I read the post and comments. So tracking conversations is very important for me. Maybe you should display the FF conversation also in your post page so I can read both without searching for the item in FF.

As for multiple conversations, I honestly don’t care. It was nice to have Bret comment here, but if he had commented on the feed item instead, I wouldn’t care. Some people will engage here, directly or clicking through from a reader or other source (FF, Twitter, emailed link, whatever). Others will engage on FF. As an author, I want to extend my reach, even if it means more work for me.

As FF grows, the evolution of their commenting system is going to be interesting to watch for you and the rest of us.

I haven’t used it for months, but I don’t recall coComment doing anything more than tracking my comments, which still means the discussion happens in multiple places. So, it seems like fractured discussion is a necessary evil.

Did I miss something?

Now, having this content (the comments) in multiple places does not make that so easy as a valuable comment might not be linked with the article.

I do see commenting as a conversation: a good comment without an answer is also depressing…..

Blogging into silence is depressing.

I don’t concern myself with driving traffic here, for traffic’s sake. I prefer engaged readers to pageviews. Blogging about FF did cause a mini-spike though the last couple times. I think this is due to FF users clicking through. FF only shows the title, so you have to click through to read the content. That drives traffic.

In both cases, you get the network effect of an expanded readership, which is gravy.