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coComment Loosens Reins on User-Generated 'Conversation'

Comments catalyze the ultimate publisher’s love-hate relationship. Either the doe-eyed enterprise blogger has too few and is trying to generate them in a pool of apathy, or s/he’s got a deluge that’s slipped completely off-topic and turned into a burn war.

For the record, coComment will solve neither of these problems. But it will make your site a more open space for conversation. And in Web 2.0, apparently that’s all that matters. (If your organization is savvy, anyway.)

coComment just announced a new service that provides online publishers with an improved tool - not for managing unwieldy user comments, but for making them unwieldier still.

coComment enables publisher to “outsource” comments without leaving any apparent seams on their sites. It also removes the need for new registration on sites upon which users want to make their opinions heard - a benefit some would argue isn’t quite a benefit at all. There’s no bridge more inviting to anonymous trollage - or spam, for that matter - than an open comment box. But hey, every conversation’s got its setbacks.

coComment’s all about accessibility. “Providing users with an instantly accessible way to submit comments on your site is one of the strongest things you can do to develop your online readership and brand,” said CEO Matt Colebourne.

“We’re enabling companies to enhance their editorial through the voices of their readers.” (And trolls. The trolls, in particular, have rather resonant voices.)

The new service boasts the following assets:

• Social features, in which registered members can befriend one another and track each other’s comments
• Plug-ins for WordPress, Movable Type, Drupal and other major blog platforms
• Searchable comments on coComments network

Implementation of this solution is free via coComment. (But if you really want to leverage this “comments as a controlled conversation” thing, we’d give Commentful a go first.)