Tweetboard Brings Evolution to the Comments

Screen shot of the Tweetboard on Aviary.com

Comments are the hardest thing to keep under control and have stay on topic.  There are hundreds of scripts that will post comments and links to other websites or Spamming. At one point I was not moderating the comments left and I found that it made the readers’ experience difficult as they try to avoid clicking on a rouge link in the comments.

When I started holding the comments for moderation, checking each against know spam and reading myself before it was allowed to be seen with the story I noticed there were less comments getting posted. The plus side is the comments that do make the cut have helped to build a stronger post and give me stronger insight on what people really want read.

Now in 2009 I began seeing the conversation about the stories was moving off site and on to Twitter. When you look at the big picture, that wasn’t a bad thing at all.  I started seeing more traffic when one article would catch someones attention they would Tweet what was on their mind in regards to the post and attach a link to the site or story. This past April was prime example of how one person reading and sharing could spread like wild fire. That month alone ate up my yearly hosting budget on excess bandwidth charges. I began to looking for options that would pull the Tweets along side the comments of each story and keep the dialog alive and have all sides represented with the original post. Not that I wanted to pay for extra bandwidth. I wanted to see that some thoughts would be able grow into actions. Now one start-up project may make this possible and pull all the Twitter comments into the story’s page.

Tweetboard by 140ware is a widget that resides on top the website that allows posting comments regarding the post Twitter. When someone is reading an article they can click on the little green tab and log-on to Twitter and share their thoughts. From that point all Tweets referencing the post will be nested below in and in order. The concept is solid and implementing the Tweetboard on a site is simple. It works exactually the way they say. The only suggestion I would have so far is that there was an option to pick the color of the tab on left side.

I’m going to run the Tweetboard for a while and see how it shakes out. If there is a lot spammy comments or other off topic uses, it will come off. So give it a whirl and share your opinion on this layer of communicating.