I love reading Internet discussions. That’s a source of inspiration, news and post ideas.
There are so many sites where people can share their opinions on any article (popular social voting sites, micro-blogging platforms, etc), that it might be time consuming to check them all.
Here are two tools that aggregate comments fro a number of platforms:
ConvoTrack
ConvoTrack is an online comment aggregation tool that collects discussions surrounding any blog article from the following sites:
- Twitter,
- FriendFeed,
- Digg,
- Reddit,
- HackerNews
It also offers a very handy bookmarklet that opens a sidebar featuring comments for any post.
Benefits:
- Sort comments by the source (Twitter, FriendFeed, or blog link);
- Opens in a sidebar, so you can see comments and the post itself simultaneously;
- Bookmarklet for quick access (FireFox and Internet Explorer compatible).
YackTrack
YackTrack is my recent discovery I keep blogging on. It aggregates opinions on any post from a number of social media sites. For any URL you enter you will be able to see:
- Twitter mentions (including TinyURL backlinks);
- Actual on-site comments to the post;
- Comments on Mixx;
- Reviews on StumbleUpon;
- Google reader comments;
- Comments on Digg.
Benefits:
- Seems to return much more comments than ConvoTrack;
- Offers IE and FireFox bookmarklet.
Hey Ann, these are very cool tools! The only aggregator I’ve used so far to see what’s going on is Joe Hall’s WhosTalkin.com site. Have you used it? Would love to get your thoughts.
Also, I wonder if there is such a thing as a tool like this that also searches through forums?
Very cool – I’ve been using BackType for a while, but these have really good interfaces to consider.
WhosTalkin.com is an awesome tool, I use it a lot.
Hi Matt, glad you’ve been making use of BackType. I use ConvoTrack myself quite regularly. — it was actually built by Wesley at improvingtheweb.com using our BackType Connect API (http://www.backtype.com/connect) — it takes our connect bookmarklet to the next level. We’re really happy to see people creating new and interesting tools with the API.
What’s about Ubervu?? And what mashable has been doing with them and Disqus??
@Guillaume – Ubervu is in private beta right now. Once they launch a public version, I’ll be happy to review them on SEJ
Ann – both great services, as well as Backtype, which is also good at searching comments. You should also check out http://www.samepoint.com, which allows you to search by type of social media.
Both of these services sound very useful and definitely help when time is an issue. This is a neat way of really sub-categorizing by the majority of the main social media network sites. I will have to check it out for sure. Interesting post.