Not too long ago, we discussed the problem of conversation fragmentation in the blogosphere and how new services, like FriendFeed, as well as old services, like Digg, were providing places to have conversations about a blog post off of the blog’s web site itself. While many saw this trend as a natural evolution, some, mainly content producers, were upset, now having to check several different places around the web to track conversations about their content. However, for Rob Diana (aka “Regular Geek“), the discussion around this issue served as an inspiration to build a service that can help: YackTrack.
Introducing YackTrack
YackTrack is a conversation tracker, automating the search for the comments that many content producers currently have to seek out on their own. After searching for a similar service that does this and not finding one, Rob decided to build his own.
Using YackTrack is simple – just enter in the URL whose comments you want to see and and click “Search for URL.” YackTrack scours the net to find comments from services like Digg, Disqus, FriendFeed, Mixx, StumbleUpon, Technorati, and WordPress. Each supported service has its own separate section so you can follow the conversation that takes place on that site.
YackTrack’s Web Site
There are still many things people wish that YackTrack could do, but Rob says those are coming. Specifically, his future plans include registration and saving URLs to track, RSS and email notifications, more supported services, and, based on initial user feedback, maybe a WordPress plugin as well. He also hints at something even bigger, saying “My future plans are fairly straightforward, except for one part that I would prefer not to talk about yet.”
Despite these big plans, Rob seems humbled and surprised by the attention the service is receiving, especially considering the service only launched yesterday. He’s worried that his server, never tested to withstand a huge traffic influx, won’t be able to handle the load we send. (RWW has been known to crash startups’ servers before). “This is not a large beast like FriendFeed or Twitter,” he says. Maybe not yet, Rob, but I’d buy some extra servers and bandwidth just in case.
Update: Marshall made a YackTrack bookmarklet! Drag this to your browser’s bookmark toolbar:
