I was given the opportunity today to sit in a press conference briefing with the folks over at JS-Kit.com, or should I say Echo? They have changed the name of the company from JS-Kit, one that I couldn’t seem to wrap my head around, to now just being Echo. I myself like the change and I think it better represents the mission of the company.
We have yet to adopt any commenting system here on the Blog World blog but I think it may be time to look into allowing some real time comments and conversations to break out. Once of the benefits of Echo that was discussed in the call was the fact that “comments turn into a chat room and the conversations in the chat room are more interesting than the actual content.”
They tell us about Echo:
Echo is…
the next generation commenting system. It’s the way to share your content, and watch the live reaction. You can quickly embed Echo on WordPress, Blogger, or any website and turn your static pages into a real-time stream of diggs, tweets, comments and more.
Those of you that remember Techcrunch’s Real Time Crunchup might remember how they stated boldly that comments were dead. I am not quite sure if death is the proper word but certainly given Twitter and other real time web applications, the way we communicate on blogs is changing. Echo looks to be a leader in that change with its new system. Echo will allow the publisher to manage the real time stream. Where once we shouted “Content is King” and now we are shouting “Social Networks are King”, Echo allows for the balancing act to occur between the two.
Echo has some competition out there in the world with other commenting applications with the likes of IntenseDebate and Disqus and others, but they seem to get the idea that they have the ability to harness the power of conversations in this world of social media. I look forward to what they will bring as new features and will keep a close eye on how they are changing our communication on blogs and how we as bloggers comment. They have some pretty big publishers with companies also like Technorati, Dow Jones and Hearst Media in the mix.
