Life is grand

Backtype is a promising new startup out of YCombinator that tracks comments around the web. If you have left a comment on a blog or website and included your own website’s URL in the comment then Backtype can track it. Even better, you can follow comments by specific people using the Follow feature. That makes it seem like Twitter but unlike Twitter you don’t comment or create content on Backtype. No longer do you have to use the same service as friends or sign-up with a site to keep track of one person. Friends can comment on any blog and you can easily follow them on Backtype.

It isn’t perfect yet. Your comment signature is only based on your website’s URL so if a website comment system doesn’t let you enter a URL then Backtype can’t track it (I comment on Autoblog occasionally and it doesn’t have URLs in comments.) Also not-tracked is Flickr as it doesn’t let you enter URLs when you comment on a photo. But each of your comments does have a link to your Flickr profile. I would think you could enter that URL into Backtype and then it would be able to track your comments, and friends, on Flickr.

Funnily enough we submitted a proposal to Enterprise Ireland last year that read much like what Backtype has become. The key idea is that of comment signatures (Backtype uses URLs) and being able to “claim” them on the service.

It’s an interesting and well done service so far. Simple, easy to use and it could just solve the comment problem on the web. You can find my Backtype account here.