As an update to this, Backtype integrated perfectly but I had to make some minor faux hacks in the db for the visuals to work properly. The only minor glitch I see is that Backtype isn't parsing character spacing or line breaks properly.
"... use backtype to import your new.yc comments ..."
I tried it and it works a treat now I can ditch my search.yc feed. There are so many of hackernews feeds around I'm not sure quite who to thank... news.yc, search.yc, friendfeed, backtype?
They were easily two of the most talented developers in our batch. Their production rate/output is absolutely astronomically. As one of their beta testers, they've had major features & requests pushed out zero day before.
Indeed, I had some problems setting up backtype (my coworkers link to our blog as well) but I think they were fixed after I entered my actual name. It would be great if backtype made that option stand out better in UI as well allow me to filter using more than 1 name, other than that the service has been coming together very nicely since its launch.
Lead Developer of Gmail Paul Buchheit? He's here.
CEO of a startup reviewed? He's here. (TimeSvr)
News algorithm about social news sites? delicious.com founder joshu corrects the article. (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=234749)
The community here is just excellent.