JS-Kit

On Thursday morning JS-Kit will be launching their Navigator widget. Navigator takes their current widget to a whole new level. It combines multiple panels inside one widget that should help to drive site visitors further within a blog or Web site. There are multiple design options so you should be able to find one that fits your site/blog design.

I am a big believer in getting people from the home page deep into a site or blog. The Navigator helps do this by exposing content that could be years old but is either the most popular or the most active. And then you can select content for what JS-Kit calls "editor's picks" to showcase your best works.

The Navigator widget will include the following options:

• Top - gives users access to the most popular objects (by weighted average user ratings)
• Hot –links users to the most active objects (by number of actions/time)
• Editor’s Picks - gives publishers a tool for building custom views in the form of administrator-specified list of internal or external links
• “Grab It” - viralizes a site’s content and drives both new and return visits by allowing site visitors to embed a site’s Navigator elsewhere on the web

JS-Kit added a viral option as well that lets your visitors take the Navigator from any JS-Kit powered site for use on your own site, blog, etc. I've played with Navigator and it works well. And I've appreciated the quick responses from their executive and support teams.

Yesterday we wrote about Disqus launching their comments tool and today we have another, SezWho. For a demo of how SezWho works, check out my friends at ReadWriteWeb and VentureBeat - both sites have the SezWho comment tool embedded. If you check out my title, I note that SezWho might be the best of the pack of comment tools. Why? Continue reading...

SezWho builds up distributed ratings and reputation which in simple terms means that your comment here on CN can add value to your comments on RWW, etc. In speaking with SezWho CEO Jitendra Gupta he said that the idea is to "carry your reputation with you" and can help CN leverage whether you should be allowed to comment directly or require validation, etc. The team has filed several patents around their technology.

They aren't building a destination site but rather a distributor site - meaning that they want bloggers to use the tool. They offer a free version and soon a premium version with more features and access. The team recently closed a $1 million Series A round of financing.

Here is an example from VentureBeat:

The new features they are rolling out today include:

Stats for commenters Verification system so no one can "fake" your account "Red Carpet" which shows the top rated commenters on a site A badge to show your score within the SezWho network - Jitendra suggested that site owners might use the badge to show how they work with the community

Back to why I think it's the top of the crop. First, comments remain on your site and aren't touched in any way. Search engine optimization remains, no issues with "what if this startup goes under" and it keeps everything nice and tidy. Also, the widget is placed on top of the comments and adds value to both the reader and the site owner. I could see a great mashup of Outbrain's personalized ratings plus SezWho's technology on the comment side to create a powerful force in comment ratings.

Some have asked me when or if I will install any of these tools (JS-Kit, SezWho, Outbrain, Disqus, etc.) and the answer is that I am still working on a strategy around this area. Our relationship is most important to me so whatever I add has to add value for you and has to make sense from a technology standpoint.

I don't think I have gone 24 hours in the past month without hearing something about content ratings, comment ratings, widgets for content based on ratings, comment optimization and general forum tools. We have written about Outbrain who takes ratings and personalizes content based on them, JS-Kit who takes ratings and creates widgets to help find new content on a site and today Disqus launches. Each of these services provide some functionality that is the same and each has their own spin.

I had the chance to speak with Disqus co-founder Daniel Ha. Disqus comes out of the Y Combinator startup incubator and the team is based in Silicon Valley. The team is two people including Daniel and they aren't speaking about funding ouside of the Y Combinator investment.

Disqus' main functionality is centered around comments and creating forum threads from those comments. Their tagline is "powering better discussion" and they are centered around the discussion not the blog itself. You can check out a working version on Fred Wilson's blog.

Disqus is creating visibility for content outside the site itself by creating forums on their destination site that drive visitors back to the blogs that generate the content. When a user comments on a Disqus-enabled blog, that comment can be rated and those ratings drive the user's overall score. Also, the comment feeds back to that user's Disqus profile page which Hu calls a "microblogging page" which will house all of a user's comments across all Disqus-enabled blogs.

One of the things I like about what they offer is the spam protection. If you switch to their comment system, they have two spam filters which protect bad comments from appearing. My concern with Disqus (as with the other systems as well) is being able to take the data with you and what it takes to re-import it back into your blog should you desire to terminate the relationship. Frankly on Drupal (which powers CN) I believe it would be a difficult task. So if you decide to move to one of these offsite comment systems, make sure you consider this piece before making your decision.

Integration is offered for Wordpress, Typepad, Blogger, MoveableType and an API for any other platform. I have embedded an example inside.

NY-based Outbrain has removed the beta tag from their service and opened it to the World. Outbrain is a service that helps you get ratings on your content. They offer 1-click plugins to TypePad, Blogger and Wordpress with a Javascript option to meet all other blog platforms. The interesting part about Outbrain is that it finds people like you and shows you ratings for the group it places you in (along with the raw score). This would be great for hotel reviews as many times you have no idea who the person is who is writing the review. If you are used to Four Seasons, any Microtel will look like a dump and vice-versa.

Outbrain has relationships with several of the rss feed tools which have integrated the ratings widget directly into the rss feel tool. Outbrain CEO Yaron Galai sent over this description of the personalized ratings feature:

For each visitor, we look at their rating history, find like-minded people automatically, and adjust the rating scores based on that. In other words – you and I might be looking at the same blog post, but each one will see vastly different scores based on each one’s personal rating history. We think this far exceeds the functionality of all other rating widgets that just display the plain average because personal tastes are so important when consuming content (think about it… - if the average methodology used by the other widgets would be applied to, say, Last.FM - we would all be listening to Britney Spears and Hannah Montana all day long just because a ton of kids give it 5’s all day long……….)

We also think that this is the 1^st rating widget to give readers a real personal incentive to rate stuff (and rate it honestly), as they get long term value from the personalization. When your ratings have no effect on your future experience with the widget, there is absolutely no incentive to rate (+a nice incentive to abuse it…)

In my interview with Outbrain, one of the suggestions I gave them was to allow a site to not show how many people rated the item, just the rating itself. I still believe this is very necessary for smaller sites because if you read every story with zero ratings (or one), it makes the site look tiny and unappealing.

Ratings and tagging are hot right now. Check out our coverage of Outbrain, JS-Kit and Jiglu, all providers who help you find more content that might appeal to you. Each attacks the ratings process a bit differently.

This evening I spoke with Khris Loux, JS-Kit CEO about some updates to the JS-Kit suite that will be launching in the coming days. I must say that I enjoyed my discussion with Khris because it seems we are both analytics nuts.

Badges/Widgets

They currently offer a "top" ratings widget and will be launching a "hot" ratings widget in the coming days. The way Khris describes the difference is that once a story makes the top list, it's hard to unseat it. But with hot, a story could be good or bad but as long as it has a number of ratings in a given time period, it will appear as hot. I think both are good complements to each other and the new hot widget can drive traffic to the stories people are discussing now.

GrabIt

The second major update is called GrabIt. GrabIt allows you to pick up a badge/widget and place it on your own blog or start page (netvibes/schmedley/etc.). If you read a blog that posts lots of content each day, it can become overwhelming. What this widget can do is cut through the clutter and show you just the posts that people think are worthy.

Comment Tool Updates

This is the area I am glad the JS-Kit team has been working on. One of my frustrations with using the comment tool on CN was around search engine optimization. For sites that have large numbers of comments, the SEO value from the comments can be immense. Khris noted that they have fixed the SEO issues and now all comments will provide optimization benefits to the site where the comments reside.

Other updates include:

• Pre/post moderation
• Visitor controls to allow site visitors to sort the comments in the way they wish (top, new, etc.)
• RSS feeds

JS-Kit is an 8-person team and is located in Silicon Valley. I will be working with Khris on potential integration on CN in the coming week.