Congrats! You had a great launch with great feedback from the blogosphere! I kinda feel envious!
dp
· 1 year ago
Download Squad sent me here. Signing up and following a few blogs convinced me. But now I have questions, and am thinking there needs to be some discussion. The comment section of your blog seems the right place for that, considering.
So, my first comment is that various features would make the site/service easier to use. Such as: a way of following blogs without knowing the author's name. I've searched on a dozen names, each associated with a specific URL, and succeeded with only four. It would be really helpful if a subscription/follow mechanism were in place for URLs. Even better would be a bookmarklet or context menu item. Then I could follow comments on the Backtype blog!
I also have a comment about site navigation. You've used 'dashboard', which might be more easily understood as 'my dashboard'. Sometimes the meaning of labels like 'home' and 'dashboard' can be misunderstood because other web services use the same labels but which have different functions.
Overall, I'm really looking forward to seeing this develop. It's a much appreciated tool.
Now let's see if this comment gets picked up...
Christopher Golda
· 1 year ago
We have blog pages e.g. http://www.backtype.com/blog/www.techcrunch.com but BackType isn't designed to let users follow comments by blog -- it lets you follow comments by topic and by author.
We're planning on adding an advanced search page for people (where you will be able to find authors by their URL, in addition to their name).
Thanks for your interest and feedback!
dp
· 1 year ago
That advanced search page sounds good. Anything to increase the chances of a successful 'follow' sounds good. Have you any other plans for ferreting out comment authors, either on their own sites or elsewhere?
In addition, can you clarify whether certain types of sites are likely prospects? I'm wondering about online news services like the Guardian, which have loads of bloggers, and loads of commenters. Will BackType work with those kind of sites?
Marcio
· 1 year ago
I really like the service, but the blogs I'm suggesting are not getting indexed. Only my comments on super-mainstream blogs (like techcrunch) are crawled by Backtype. I use the service to have a better control of my comments and replies on blogs, but if only 1% of my comments are retrieved, there's no use. Please expand your crawling domain :)
Nikolay Kolev
· 1 year ago
Expanding the number of crawled blogs will require resources and BackType is an early-stage startup.
Marcio
· 1 year ago
Thank you for the reply! Hope you get more resources soon! :)
Christopher Golda
· 1 year ago
We review all blog suggestions -- they are added to the index unless there is a good reason not to. If you let me know which ones we're missing, I'll make sure they get added or let you know why they can't be: support [at] backtype [dot] com
Thanks
MatthewBennett
· 1 year ago
Hi, really great idea for a service. I arrived from Disqus where my very first question on joining was: "Where's the search box so that I can look for other people, comments and debate in the fields I'm interested in?" I look forward to seeing how you develop it.
All Comments
So, my first comment is that various features would make the site/service easier to use. Such as: a way of following blogs without knowing the author's name. I've searched on a dozen names, each associated with a specific URL, and succeeded with only four. It would be really helpful if a subscription/follow mechanism were in place for URLs. Even better would be a bookmarklet or context menu item. Then I could follow comments on the Backtype blog!
I also have a comment about site navigation. You've used 'dashboard', which might be more easily understood as 'my dashboard'. Sometimes the meaning of labels like 'home' and 'dashboard' can be misunderstood because other web services use the same labels but which have different functions.
Overall, I'm really looking forward to seeing this develop. It's a much appreciated tool.
Now let's see if this comment gets picked up...
We're planning on adding an advanced search page for people (where you will be able to find authors by their URL, in addition to their name).
Thanks for your interest and feedback!
In addition, can you clarify whether certain types of sites are likely prospects? I'm wondering about online news services like the Guardian, which have loads of bloggers, and loads of commenters. Will BackType work with those kind of sites?
Thanks