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February 28, 2006
CoComment tracking tech for weblogs to be spun out of Swisscom
Last week the alarm:clock euro reported the launch of a new weblog comment tracking service called coComment, which came out of the labs of Swisscom. In the meantime, we confirmed in an interview with project management team from Swisscom that it is likely to be spun out into a stand-alone company.
Laurent Haug is one of of the co-creators of coComment
The a:c euro interviewed the people behind coComment, project leader Nicolas Dengler of Swisscom Innovations; Laurent Haug, an independent consultant, and Marco Chong of Swisscom Business Development.
"The coComment project was financed by Swisscom as one of a number of ventures and business development projects the company is making to explore emerging technologies and business models. At the same time, we're happy to help enhance Swisscom's image as a supporter of innovation" said Chong, adding that CoComment has "nothing to do with the firm's Bluwin consumer portal, or the blog platform running on Bluwin".
That means the costs of the development are not coming out a Swisscom business line, but from a corporate investment-venture budget.
The people behind CoComment are confident about commercialization prospects due to the feedback from early adopters. "CoComment tracks the conversation. Users can track their own comments and they can keep track of others. It has a dedicated user base and it provides a value to these users," said Haug.
While firms like Technorati can track the number of links to a blog, and others like Digg, can provide a window into the popularity of posts, the other important driver of blog popularity, the so-called conversation, has few support tools. In many weblogs the comments made by readers are often as valuable as the original post.
The plan now is to create an independent company, and eventually seek outside investors. "We look at Technorati as an example of the kind of business that can be built for the blogging community. And we are working on the business model. While adverstising is an obvious possibility, one thing we can say is that we won't be adding advertising directly to users comments."
Chong said that Swisscom is currently the sole owner of coComment, but that it does not see this as a “potential core business” in the future. It is examining the "potential to generate a cash return on its investment”. He added: “If a spinout is pursued, it is likely that Swisscom would maintain an equity stake in the company."
Posted on February 28, 2006 05:23 PM | Posted to Web 2.0 | Permalink
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