Tuesday, September 06, 2005

The Problem of Tracking Conversation

Barb Dybwad on The Social Software Weblog posts this piece on the problem of tracking conversation. Barb uses a del.icio.us tag to keep track of where she's been...still, there really are no good tools to do this.

As the web becomes more interactive, and blogging becomes a more integral part of many of our personal identities, tracking conversations will continue to grow in importance. As it stands now, not only is it difficult but also quite laborious to do so.

I know there are threads of me all over the place. On some days I'm a compulsive commenter. Can't help it...just part of my "look at me!" neurotic busybody nature.

Further, now that Technorati has created more little doo-hickeys for others to find us, it is becoming increasingly more difficult to find others who link to us. With the new Technorati format, using a search to check who has linked to one's blog is now also a laborious task. I have found recently that I must click the name of my blog multiple times before I will get search results. More often than not, I get a "Sorry" message that requests I check again.

But I can check again, and again, and again and not be able to get the search results unless it is very late in the day or quite early in the morning--known as "off-peak hours" in the old-fashioned telecom lexicon.

This occurred even before Hurricane Katrina, so increased traffic due to Katrina cannot be factored in as part of the "reasonable excuse" for the search function not working adequately.

Dave, if you're scanning Yours Snarkily again, leave a nugget to explain the problems with the search...perhaps Technorati's indexing is getting ahead of its searching capacity.

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4 comments:

ohdawno said...

I'm thinking of starting a card file - seriously, a 'real paper' index card file - of the places I've commented so I can go back and see if the conversation has continued or ended. Sometimes low tech is just easier.

Tish Grier said...

I'm finding the same thing over here...that sometimes low-tech helps keep one's high-tech endeavors in line.

ohdawno said...

I'm a non-techie working in an IT department of a technology company. My favorite project management tool? Big easel pad Postits covered with multicolored 3x5 sized postits. Each track has a different color, each postit is a deliverable/task/milestone. If something needs to be changed it's pretty easy to move postits around.

Who needs all that expensive hard to read harder to figure out software?

Tish Grier said...

LOL!!

so much for Power Point!