Featured changes

Split stream support in WP

Echo has supported filtering of given items for some time now (E.g. include only comments, or include everything but comments) which allowed publishers to deploy Echo in unlimited combinations including the traditional ‘Comments’ in one stream and ‘Everything Else’ in another. Until now, however, this feature has required modification of the loading parameters and was mostly only accessible to savvy users.

Although there are many possible combinations and layouts with our implementation, It is now possible to perform a traditional ‘One above the other’ split of the Echo Stream between ‘Comments’ and ‘Other reactions’ with a simple check box in the WordPress plugin.To get this feature, you need the latest Wordpress plugin.

Improved the Avatar Selector and added Gravatar Support

We have significantly improved the look and feel of the Avatar Selector which is displayed when you click on your avatar in the Comment Form. It now also supports Gravatars!

Bulk Moderation
Administrators and Moderators can now perform bulk actions in the Moderation Dashboard by using the new checkboxes and moderation controls.

External Profile Binding is perhaps one of our most advanced features. It allows publishers to integrate their login into our set of available login options and seamlessly have Echo load in a logged in stage when a user logs into the host website. We have extended this feature to now allow the host site to pass us the Avatar and the Profile URL of the given user. External Profiles can also now be bound to the rest of the standard login options so that users can be logged into Facebook, Google, Yahoo, Twitter and the Host site all at the same time.

More information about External Profile Binding can be found on the wiki.

Other Changes

Increasingly, large media organizations are learning and adapting to the notion that their job is changing. It is moving from 100% content creation through editorial processes to a mix of original content and what many call ‘content curation’.

That is, observing, hand selecting and adding value to content from the social, real-time web. The tools to perform such curation (of which Echo is a leading example), especially at real-time, are very new and have a long way to go, but we work with customers every day to get closer to this vision of what we sometimes call “real-time story telling”.

This trend is unfolding for many reasons. Economic constraints, technology advances, the evolution of social media and the emergence of the real-time web mean that everyone with a Twitter account can contribute to telling and spreading the story.

In this new world, getting ‘people on the ground’ in Hati is as simple as doing a search for #haiti on Twitter. In this new world, the content that mainstream outlets produce are not the end of the story, they are the seed around which the story grows and unfolds.

The job of a journalist, then, is to help plant the seed, ask the questions and curate the massive influx of reactions, media, links and conversation that flows through the real-time web.

This kind of thinking will transform the way people consume news and the way news organizations write, edit and present it. We can’t wait to help it unfold.

While working on this vision, we must also remember that each visitor is also a participant, and each participant has personal interests. We need to empower them to subscribe to the sources, people, topics, themes and story lines that matter to them  - irrespective of where the content originates – and to allow them to personalize and customize their experience.

This approach is critical if publishers are to turn into powerful news hubs that help their readers find, subscribe and participate in the news that matters to them.

I’ve written more about this on my blog in response to a post written by Marshall Kirkpatrick about niche news and personalization.

If the headline of this post makes you giggle with a knowing smile then we want you!

We are starting to work more closely with developers to provide the APIs they need to embrace and extend the Echo service. Be sure to join our Echo Developers Community so you can keep up with the latest and learn from other developers like you.

Look forward to seeing you there.

As many of you may know, before the Echo team sat down to design and build Echo, we first set about writing down what we all think the present and the future of the Internet looks like. We did this because we believed that if we are going to design a product, you must first know the kind of world in which the product is going to exist.

We called this world view ‘Synaptic Web’.

We published our thoughts on a wiki so that others could learn from our insights and our customers can understand the framework from which we make decisions about Echo.

Since then, due to popular demand, we have continued to give talks about, and write about, the Synaptic Web. We have also encouraged the community to help contribute to the idea so that we can all learn and grow together.

The latest such example is a Blog post I guest posted on Louis Gray’s blog entitled “Synaptic Web: Real-time is just the beginning“.

Also, Khris Loux’s video from his Defrag Keynote is now posted in the sidebar of the SynapticWeb.org wiki.

I encourage you to check them out so you learn about the kind of world we see, and to better understand the vision for Echo.

In August of 2008 Khris Loux, our CEO, wrote a post called ‘The cost of free widgets‘ which outlined 3 ways in which ‘free’ products – particularly products you embed on your site – always have a hidden cost.

In many cases the cost may be perfectly reasonable, but it’s important that publishers go in with their eyes wide open when it comes to calculating Return on Investment.

In the article, Khris outlined three ways that Free widgets may sap value in other ways. They were:

• Lack of Data Portability
• Lack of Identity Controls
• Cannibalization of Audience

Today, Phil Wainewright, over on ZDNet, has written an excellent piece taking the notion further and relating it to SaaS software of all kinds (Widgets can be considered as Software as a Service).

He explains that Free or Freemium models can have costly impacts for businesses by outlining 4 key reasons:

1. Lack of access controls (Multiple moderators, variable access rights etc)
2. Lack of Instrumentation (A focus on mass market sometimes means a dilution of focus on the things top tier customers care about like uptime, support etc)
3. There’s no such thing as a free lunch (If there is no business plan – or an opaque business plan – then what is the long term viability of the vendor)
4. Limitation of innovation because only the big guys survive (Many small players fade away or get sold for pennies leaving customers to fend for themselves).

At Echo, we believe that Phil is correct. That’s why even our most basic product costs $12. Our business model is clear, our revenues are real, and our intention is to provide a product whose design goals are aligned with those of our customers – not advertisers or any other constituents who might ultimately/indirectly/secretly pay our bills.

We believe this is the surest path to a strong partnership that can grow long term and we’re proud to have our partners and customers count us as among their fee-for-use vendors.

This is a Case Study about how one of our customers is using Echo. We’d love to hear and promote your story too, drop me a line on chris@js-kit.com.

TallyZoo

Here is a site that many of you may benefit from, especially those of you with New Year’s Resolutions. TallyZoo is a startup that has made it extremely easy to track, visualize and share the important data in your life. Basically, they make it really easy to track personal habits or simple business data, create graphs, share them and receive comments. Like a lot of startups they have both a site and an iPhone app.

How they are using Echo?

Most of our customers are blogs or larger media sites. When TallyZoo approached us we were excited to hear how they wanted to integrate Echo into their personal quant platform. Currently, they are using the White Label version of Echo seamless commenting experience on their graphs, progress updates, etc.

Here’s an example, you are tracking the number of times you go to the gym. Well, your friends could comment on your progress (or bug you if you are slacking) and with Echo, publish their comments across any of the major social platforms.

The team at TallyZoo realizes that you may want to track things and not necessarily share them with the whole world. For those activities comments can be disabled.

Who is TallyZoo for?

We can think of many ways to use TallyZoo, but to get some ideas you can always check out the community data feed. There you can see all of the public activities that users are tracking. At any given time some users are tracking weight loss, blogging, books they read, musical instruments, medication, yoga, running, cycling, and more. Who knows what else is being tracked privately. It really is cool what different people find important and worth tracking, there are bird watchers, someone trying to improve their posture, and even a bag pipe player. Not surprisingly, lots of people drinking and tracking coffee.

The TallyZoo iPhone app

One of the things that we dig about their platform is the ease-of-use of their iphone app. It takes a little while to setup, but once you do it is 1-click counting. As much as we dislike data entry (who really likes it anyway) they have made it as easy as possible. You can move the buttons around just like in on the iPhone home screen, and you can configure their behavior. For example, my coffee button counts one cup at a time and the badge shows the daily total. My button for cycling counts in 20 mile increments and doesn’t show a total badge. You can slice, dice and combine the data in more ways on the site, while the app remains for easy data entry and basic graphs.

Going forward with Echo

TallyZoo just launched and we like where they are going. They have lots of great plans to use Echo more extensively throughout their app – beyond commenting. They realize that Echo Streams can provide rich stream data for users for many different use cases.

How to try it

The iphone app costs $1.99 in the app store. The website is free.

You don’t need to buy the app to get started, you can use the site independently (They have a nice little video on how to use it here).

Three months ago we announced the ‘death of comments‘ on stage at the Techcrunch Real-time Crunchup.

In their place, we created a new product and with it, a new product category that we call Real-Time Streams for Content.

Since then we have worked hard to innovate based on customer feedback. Some visible upgrades to Echo since its launch included Whirlpools, Pause, Split Streams, Social Likes and more.

Our changes and improvements have been kindly acknowledged by the industry including being listed as one of the top 10 technologies for 2009 by ReadWriteWeb.

“Echo, from JS-Kit is a reverse syndication service for distributed social media conversations. It brings back tweets and other mentions to the page they refer to. The service is growing fast and becoming more sophisticated every week. New features come so fast and furious that it’s overwhelming but the end result is an experience that brings the dispersed social web back together again.” - Marshall Kirkpatrick, RWW

Today we are announcing 3 new and related moves by JS-Kit…

Branding

JS-Kit, the company, is renaming itself to Echo. We believe this name better fits the new direction of the business.

Mission

We believe that the web is changing. Content used to be connected by links; Content is now connected through real-time streams. Therefore we would like to re-affirm Echo’s core mission:

To enable publishers to create and curate ‘real-time streams’ for their content.

Using cutting edge technologies, philosophies and user experiences, we work with publishers to make them first class citizens on the real-time social web.

Customers

In support of this new name and clarified mission, we are announcing our first group of customers to join the real-time web with Echo:

CBS/CNet, Discovery News, Dow Jones Local Media Group, Hearst Digital News, The Press Enterprise, CanWest, Technorati and KQED (an NPR and PBS affiliate).

Echo is uniquely placed to work with customers of this caliber due to our robust moderation tools, enterprise grade support and scalability forged from 3 years of R&D in the comments and publisher tools space.

Earlier today we held a conference with our media friends. As part of the briefing, we included representatives from The Press Enterprise, Hearst Digital Media and Discovery to explain, in their own words, why they chose to partner with Echo.

Here’s some of what they had to say:

“Echo challenges the notion that comments are static, isolated events.  Echo Streams liberate the ‘comment’ with thoughts from social web and a dynamic conversation that encourages participation and sharing.” – The Press Enterprise

“Echo is the nexus for community conversation regardless of where it takes place is truly leveraging the strengths of the medium and exactly where we need to be as a digital content provider and engager.” – Sean Polay, Product Manager, Dow Jones Local Media group

These partners, and their peers in the other companies listed above, are working closely with us to continue to shape Echo and ensure that it is the first, best platform for real-time streams for content.

Update: This post was updated to better answer the questions coming from Haloscan users

Haloscan, the legacy comment system that JS-Kit acquired last year, is physically starting to fail (the software and hardware). In order to minimize the disruption for users and avoid a hard stop, we have worked hard to provide two ways to transition off the system.

This transition will happen in batches of users over the course of a couple of months. The first batch of users will start getting a notice of the upgrade right away on their Haloscan admin dashboard.

Once presented with the upgrade message, Haloscan users will have 2 weeks to make a decision. You will have the following two options.

1. Upgrade to Echo for a 30 day free Trial and then $12/year  - all your comment data will be transitioned over automatically. Read below for important information about Echo.
2. Export your Haloscan comment data and turn off their service – Haloscan comment importers are on the way from various vendors.

If you do not choose a specific path within the 2 weeks notice, you will be upgraded to the Echo trial automatically.

While Haloscan has been a trusted friend for many and we recognize that change is always difficult and daunting, however we hope that the new features, great support and constant innovation on the Echo platform will offset the challenges of any switch.

Please note that Echo is NOT Haloscan.

While Echo fundamentally allows users to comment on your posts, it is not the same as Haloscan – it is not designed to be. It has a slightly different feature set and a different vision and roadmap. We appreciate your patience when trying to learn and adjust to its different apparoach.

At the current time, we do not plan on adding any additional Haloscan features to Echo, however please log your requests on the support forum and we will try to prioritize things if they fit into the broader Echo roadmap.

Further Support

We will do our best to try to minimize the turbulence. We appreciate your patience and understanding during this period.

As questions emerge, we will add answers to the Haloscan -> Echo upgrade FAQ page.

Please post specific support requests to our support forum here.

Today Google announced real-time search on their search pages. ReadWriteWeb has great coverage here. Techcrunch here and here.

Then Facebook announced via Twitter:

@Facebook We’re working with Google to offer real-time search of public content on Facebook Pages.#googlesearch

This is all very interesting news.

As I said on Twitter earlier today:

@ChrisSaad Google brings Real-time to search, Echo brings Real-Time search & comments to publishers – Welcome to the real-time web #googlesearch

With Echo, publishers can effectively embed real-time search experiences at the bottom of each of their pieces of content to display the content, conversation and links that are related to their pages.

Echo doesn’t just stop there though, we provide robust moderation features so you can curate the stream and have control over what ends up on your site. In addition, your users can use Echo to log in using any of their social identities and share their comments across the social networks for maximum distribution of your content.

Echo is the quick, easy and effective way of adding real-time search to your pages the way Google and Facebook are doing for their destination sites.

Are you part of the Real-time web yet? Add Echo to your site and join in.