Here’s a sweet little hack that brings all the chatter about any website or article from across various social services right into a browser sidebar, eliminating the need to visit another web page in order to track conversations.
ConvoTrack is the name of the tool, and what it does is leverage the BackType API to enable anyone to see what’s being said about e.g. a TechCrunch article in just one browser window or tab.
Here’s an example link (screenshot below).
Here’s how it works: prepend any URL with “http://convotrack.com/” and you’ll see the destination website with a sidebar next to it, displaying relevant search results, references and links from sites like Twitter, FriendFeed, HackerNews, Digg, Reddit, and even blog comments. You can choose to have the conversation displayed in one stream, or filter down per service.
ConvoTrack also comes with a handy bookmarklet that you can drag to your browser toolbar. When you’re reading an interesting article, you can instantly view what’s being said about it across social media sites by clicking the bookmarklet, and share the link with others while you’re at it. Remember: all this without having to leave the website where the article was published. Finally, a small embeddable script allows website owners to place a button on their site, enabling visitors to access the conversation on the social web in just one click.
Not bad at all, Wesley. The only gripe I have is that, particularly with the FriendFeed stream, sometimes the context of certain comments get lost, but I understand that’s not something anyone can easily solve for now.
