

Backtype (YC summer 08): Twitter for comments launches - rokhayakebe
http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/08/27/backtype-a-twitter-for-comments/
Although the article calls it Twitter for comments I think it is more a Google for Comments.
======
tdavis
We've been using BackType in Beta for a while now and it has been an
incredibly useful service. They're already a good way to keep up on what
people are saying about your business (much like Google Groups) and as they
add more blogs to the fold it will only increase the usefulness.

Great job guys.

~~~
rantfoil
BackType fills a huge need for every startup founder out there who wants to
keep on top of what people are saying about their product. I look at it every
day.

The BackType guys have really nailed it.

------
whacked_new
I find it quite unfortunate that this is termed as a "Twitter for comments"
rather than just a comment tracker. The application has merit in itself,
regardless of Twitter's existence and history. This would have been useful
even before Twitter.

~~~
omakase
Fair enough. We've found it a useful way to explain the idea of following all
your friends comments. There are two ways people are using it right now;
following comments by the author (twitter for comments), and searching them by
keywords.

~~~
fallentimes
ahem Kayak for Sports Tickets

This is straight out of Made to Stick. It gets people to understand what
you're saying or building very very quickly. Once you're established, the word
linking is no longer necessary.

They should have marketed themselves the TicketStumbler of comments, but I
digress.

~~~
daniel-cussen
Youtube was originally "the flickr of video."

[http://www.siliconbeat.com/entries/2005/08/14/youtube_the_fl...](http://www.siliconbeat.com/entries/2005/08/14/youtube_the_flickr_of_video.html)

------
PStamatiou
As a long-time blogger that has seen comment-based startups come and go, I
have to say this is pretty badass. Unlike those failed comment-tracking
companies I don't have to install a plugin or what have you, backtype just
indexes. Neat to find some of the comments I've made in the past - although I
have a feeling I've made more than 80 comments in the last 1-2 years.

Anyways, eloquent solution guys. :-) And I'm loving the clickpass support. 1
minute registration. However with the clickpass registration I did not receive
feedback that my username was taken.. it just hung, but I assumed "Paul" was
taken so I tried again and it worked.

~~~
konsl
Glad you're enjoying it. Clickpass is awesome indeed, but there are a couple
things we need to fix. Thanks for spotting that.

------
konsl
FYI Everyone can add their Hacker News comments to their profiles too -- add
<http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=YOUR_USERNAME> to the list of websites on
your account page. Alternatively, you could just do a people search for your
username and claim it from there.

------
whacked_new
Pardon me if this has been addressed completely before, but you are storing
the comments on your server, right (I wouldn't believe you if you say no
anyway)? Privacy issues aside, what about copyright issues?

Disqus, for example, says that the comment owners are owned by the commenters.
Suppose then, as a comment owner I want to prohibit you from storing it on
your servers?

~~~
fallentimes
Robot.txt file. You can tell Google to do the same thing.

~~~
briansmith
Only the site owner can use Robots.txt. The commenter cannot control it.

------
hooande
The Backtype RSS feed for your company name is now required reading, fellas.
You'd have to be crazy to pass up on a chance to get feedback and join
conversations about your product. Just hope that your competition hasn't
already started using it.

~~~
ian
Totally agree, I've wanted this to exist for a while. Thanks guys.

------
fallentimes
I would pay gobs of money per month for this service once they have analytics
and cover more blogs. Great job guys.

------
apexauk
Cool. Possible to do anything to solve the www-vs-no-www (essentially
duplicate content) issues?

(entered my websites then immediately wondered if I should enter them
with/without the www as I may sometimes leave that out when commenting.. also
searched for a friend and his blog came up twice in the people search results)

~~~
omakase
those are technically different urls, so we'll have to do something to figure
that out. you won't see duplicate comments as a result, just duplicate people.

right now putting both on your profile helps because then people looking for
your comments will see them all in one place.

thanks for the feedback

~~~
apexauk
aye.. might be worth going with the notion that chances of different sites
existing at www.domain and <http://domain> (in particular those different
sites being used as the identities of two different people) is probably
0.00somethingverysmall.. sure google etc do their funky duplicate content
detection but y'know, i reckon you guys could just add a "this aint right"
button in the same style as your ones to flag fakes etc, and then just wait
for the day anyone actually uses it before worrying what to do about this.

------
13ren
[not criticizing but curious]: what's your competitive advantage with respect
to Google?

Google's blog search doesn't search blog _comments_ , and doesn't (explicitly)
search on comment author. But google could add these things easily. What
protects you? I'm guessing:

    
    
      (a) this niche is too small/specialized for google to care; or
      (b) if google did care, they buy you. Liquidity event!

------
maxklein
This is a nice product. Do you have an API that would allow one specify a
company name and it returns a feed or so of mentions? Anything like that
planned?

~~~
konsl
An API is one of our top priorities.

~~~
maxklein
Like how soon are we talking of here? Couple of weeks? Or couple of months?

------
ryanwaggoner
Looks awesome...great job!

~~~
omakase
thanks man. I added your blog to backtype :)

------
cosmok
<http://www.backtype.com/>

------
rokhayakebe
Makes you want to rethink what you say online. The application was able to
bring identities that I thought were completely separated online. Great job

------
danw
So you can 'claim' anyone's comments as your own?

