Library clips

A while ago I posted on YackTrack, which is a solution to catching comments made about your blog posts that happen in other blogs and places.

Well now there is a new contender, BackType, which is the same comment network I posted on a while ago (once you register it finds comments you make without you having to submit them in Backtype, and you can also network with other profiles). It has now also added a comment link tracking feature called Connect, and they have also sliced part of this into and offshoot product called BackTweets.

What do we have so far?

It’s basically the Technorati link search of the conversational web.

If I want to see a list of blog posts that have linked to one of my blog posts, all I do is do a link search in Technorati

This is great as now I am aware of both people who comment directly on my blog post, and also people who talk about me (link to my blog posts) in their blog posts.

Here’s an example.

BONUS: You don’t have to visit Technorati to do this, you can use a browser bookmarklet, or even place a button on the footer of your blog posts.

Blogrovr, also does this but filtered to a set of blogs of your choice. Whenever you visit a webpage, Blogrovr will give you a list of blog posts from your blog set that link to this webpage you are on.

PostRank is also worth a mention. It’s less about conversations, but does measure the social activity metrics of your blog posts. Here’s my PostRank.

[ADDED 18/03/09: Bit.ly, and wwwitter show the tweet conversation for the page you are on]

[ADDED 20/03/09: TweetBeep do domain search alerts on Twitter…but I don’t think they cover all the URL shortners…or do they…]

So where does BackType Connect fit in?

Nowadays there is conversation about your blog posts that is happening aside from your blog comments form and links from the blogosphere.

• People may be linking to you blog posts when commenting in another blog’s comment form
• People may be linking to your blog posts in Twitter
• People may be posting and commenting about your blog posts in Friendfeed
• People may be commenting about your blog posts in Digg

BackType Connect is catching the commentsphere or the conversational web; basically it extends to the nooks and crannies that Technorati doesn’t include in its service.

If someone links to my blog in another blog, Technorati will catch it, and now if someone links to my blog in Friendfeed, Twitter, Digg, blog comments, etc…BackType will catch it.

This allows people on the web to behave naturally, people aren’t forced to comment on your blog post, they can do it anywhere. As long as they use the mighty hyperlink, we can catch these conversations and re-assemble them.

What do I mean by re-assemble?

Well on each blog post I have a stream of comments…sometimes ;( …but I also have a link to Technorati to catch others who are talking about my blog post. And now I can also catch others who are tweeting, friendfeeding, digging…my blog post. So no mattter where they do it I can keep the conversation intact.

For the conversational web I’m still using YackTrack, and wondering if BackType also offer a blog post footer button…then I can choose the service that works best.

Here’s a quick test for my post:

http://libraryclips.blogsome.com/2009/03/15/crowdsource-as-a-way-to-create-a-community/

Here are the results in Yacktrack.

Here are the results in BackType Connect.

YackTrack caught one Tweet linking to my blog post, and one Delicious comments field which came across in Friendfeed

NOTE: I don’t think it tracks Delicious, it only found this because it ended up in Friendfeed (the reason I say this is another comment in Delicious did not turn up)

BackType Connect caught 9 tweets

The success of these services is that they must keep a collection of all the URL shortener’s, and then catch our posts that have been link shortened.

NOTE: BackType Connect doesn’t offer a feed, but you can grab one by placing feeds.backtype.com in the URL

feeds.backtype.com/connect/libraryclips.blogsome.com%252f2009%252f03%252f15%252fcrowdsource-as-a-way-to-create-a-community%252f”>http://feeds.backtype.com/connect/libraryclips.blogsome.com%252f2009%252f03%252f15%252fcrowdsource-as-a-way-to-create-a-community%252f

One other thing, just like Technorati, you can put your blog homepage URL in BackType Connect and it will catch conversations from any of your blog posts

NOTE: On a second look I think BackType is attempting to replace Technorati Link search, at least for coverage of Wordpress, Typepad, and Blogger.

Backtweets

As mentioned Backtweets is an off shoot product that just displays the tweets that BackType Connect catches. It also has a bookmarklet.

Here’s an example of the same blog post as demonstrated above.

What’s really great about this is, is that at time of posting I only knew about 2 of the 9 results. This means I was only aware of 20% of tweets that are talking about the blog post in question, and those are the one’s that included “@johnt” or “johnt” in the tweet.

But I didn’t know the other 7.

What happened is that bhc3 (Hutch Carpenter) tweeted about it, and then 5 other’s re-tweeted him…since “@johnt” or “johnt” was not in these tweets, I did not know about them.

The other 2 tweets simply linked to my blog post…again since “@johnt” or “johnt” was not in these tweets, I did not know about them.

This is an important tool for people monitoring their brand. Tweetback to the rescue!

Anyway, what I did was entered my blog homepage into Tweetback and grabbed the feed, and put it in my Google Reader.

Now, whenever someone links to my blog posts in Twitter I will know.

NOTE: Also wondering if Tweetback has embed code to use as a blog footer button on each of my posts

[ADDED 18/04/09: ConvoTrack]