Predicting The Future (continued)

Steve Rubel’s first prediction in a multi-post series is a good one:

Blog comments have perhaps more collective wisdom inside them than any other form of consumer generated content. However, as of today, there’s essentially no way to mine them. Who’s going to help us here? Will it be Google, Yahoo, Technorati or Ice Rocket? Or will some great new search engine come along and change the game. Tune in this time next year.

Steve is right, of course, but there is so much more to be done with comments than simply being able to search them.

We need a solution to comment spam, maybe captchas are it, but TypePad doesn’t support them yet. Most of the other blogging platforms seem to offer them by now.

We also need a way to "subscribe" to a comment thread.  I post comments a lot on blogs.  I rarely go back to see what reaction they generate.  If, when I post a comment, I get the option to subscribe to the comment thread, via email or RSS, that would be great.

And as I have said before, we need a way to elevate the best comments right up onto the front page.  I realize that most of my posts generate comments that are way better than my posts.  I want a simple one click button that posts the comment right onto the bottom of the post.

Bottom line – blogs are conversations.  We need to start treating the comments like the important content that they are instead of an afterthought.

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