making the “long tail” longer.

or better. or something.

I think you guys should check this out.

http://www.fullcirc.com/weblog/2004/11/neighbornode.htm

What do you see? A blog entry with a bunch of comments. Not so special. However, what is interesting is the timing of the comments and who’s writing them. The first six comments are by people who regularly go to the site (= Nancy’s friends). And they are all made during the regular time span of blogging comments -within a few days after the blog entry was written. Which was November 12th.

Now, the last 4 comments were written in the last week. And they are written by my friends. I think it went down this way. I started bookmarking my comments on delicious here. Seb probably subscribed to my list, checked through them and left a comment of his on the neighbornode post. But also, he had started keeping his own list on delicious of where he was commenting. And I subscribed to that. So when I got a notice that he had commented on that same url, I went back and re-commented. And Seb got a notice about that and so returned. Then, Robin was taking a look around my list or Seb’s list, and he followed it and wrote a comment.

This isn’t the 2nd coming or anything, but a post was revived and brought to a new circle of people, not through anybody doing anything “on purpose”. Seb and I want to keep track of our own comments on other people’s weblogs anyways. But my making that information available to others, something unexpected happened. I think that it was determined that that info has value. Seb doesn’t blog as often as I would like. I am more than interested in subscribing the the rss feed where I can read his thoughts on other people’s posts. And I would be as interested in hearing what Jon Udell says in his comments, as well as interested in where he is commenting (it’s more relevant than just looking at his linkroll). Same thing with Many2Many.

12 Responses to “making the “long tail” longer.”

  1. Nancy White Says:

    Funny, I was wondering what sparked the rebirth of the comment thread. Now I know! OK, I’m game to try this if I can remember. I confess, the number of tasks and details I’m trying to cram into a day and into a middle aged female brain is getting out of control. So the practice-ability of this is an issue! Not the lack of intention!

  2. mtl3p Says:

    Hey Nancy. I guess you got my email.

    You shouldn’t have to remember. There are delicious bookmarklets for the different browsers. Just install one. Then you can do it all via a right click as soon as you click “post comment”. It’s especially easy if you highlight your comment first because then it includes it in the “extended” field of your delicious entry.

  3. Patrick Says:

    Excellent idea and interesting followup. I’m not sure though how you associate it with the long tail which refers to every product beign available, no mather how small the market, thanks to online tech (very very short blurb, more complex idea). Because it lets every person who might be interested in the thread find it? Sounds like something different to me, like a blog post echo…

  4. Nico Says:

    Realy interesting. Post resurrecting thanks to comment bookmarking. One thing i found a bit limited with blogs was the fact that a post can be lost easily, so this kind of tool is good to prevent that.

    And i realy like this idea of neighbornodes, local web is a big issue.

  5. Euan Semple Says:

    It’s pretty bloody close to the second coming - I’ve been wanting a way to subscribe to comments threads for ages and this takes us one step close.

    Cheers!

  6. tecosystems Says:

    del.icio.us + Comments = What, Exactly?

    Joho (Weinberger) points to this entry which describes the flyweight relationship between del.icio.us and blog comments. This is interesting to me for several reasons:I often post quick comments to my del.icio.us rather than the original site, because …

  7. hugh Says:

    mike, have added my 2 cents to the neighbournode discussion on nancy white’s site.

    you can find my comments at, yup,

    http://del.icio.us/mackinaw/mycomment

    ps your blog wont let me post with my blog as url!
    http://dosemagazine(dot)blogspot(dot)com

  8. the iCite net development blog Says:

    Tracking blog post comments with del.icio.us

    Michael Lenczner describes how he is using del.icio.us to keep track of blog posts he comments on‚Äîand the ones commented on by other folks he’s interested in (via David Weinberger). Sounds excellent.

  9. mtl3p Says:

    It’s true patrick. The long tail was completely the wrong metaphor. But I’m glad you understood it anyways.

    I’m going to use mycomments as the tag. I suggest you all do too.

  10. Boris Anthony Says:

    hrm.
    One prollem: that’s alot of RSS feeds to manage. However, there IS the del.icio.us “Inbox” feature (http://del.icio.us/doc/about - scroll down to the part about “Inbox”) (Joshua has apparently shut it off temporarily), which allow you to subscribe to delicious “feeds” within delicious, and then subscribe to that feed in your rss browser (or include it in html format on your weblog sidebar… if u wanted to)… or a host of other things…

    Also, keep in mind, at the end of all this… Del.icio.us is a non-commercial project by someone who will very probably one day just pull the plug. If you ascribe any value to the data you aggregate in del.icio.us, consider that. Being a centralized, networked environment you cannot simply pull down and archive your data as you lose the connections between it all. “Small Pieces Loosely Joined” ;)

  11. Seb's Open Research Says:

    Commentlogging

    Michael Lenczner may have kickstarted a new behavioral trend among bloggers ! Simply put, it consists in using the del.icio.us linklogging system to log comments after you’ve left them, by bookmarking the pages you’ve commented on.

  12. Doransky Says:

    A Trackback technológia sajátosan fejlődik

    Új jelenség terjed a blogoszférában. A http://del.icio.us oldalain van egy log redszer, amelybe bookmark-ok segítségével könnyedén fel lehet jegyezni, hogy hová kommentáltál. Ez az oldal aztán készít egy RSS lisát ebből és felir

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