One troublesome aspect for a budding blogger (or even a successful one, for that matter) is to keep track of the feedback your blog post gets on the social media, follow it up and stay in touch. Think of it this way – comments to your post on your blog are not related to the replies and retweets your post gets on Twitter, which is not related to the shares, comments and likes the post gets on Facebook, nor the comments it gets on Digg and Reddit and other platforms. As a blogger, you keep running helter-skelter to the different platforms, manage umpteen profiles, and, generally, end up lost. How wonderful would it be if all these interactions got aggregated at a single place – your blog post’s comment section?
This is where Echo jumps into the scene. Echo tries to do exactly what we were dreaming about. It works flawlessly but for the URL Shorteners (as we experienced first-hand; has some issues as shortened URLs are not detected always). What Echo does is it makes your comment form support distributed conversations in both directions – in and out. It will aggregate all feedback for your blog posts in the comment area (alas this is a paid feature), but it will also let you post comments not only on the post but also to multiple networks of your choice.
As you can see in the picture above, it is quite possible for a lot of duplicate content to be generated on the different platforms. Thankfully, all similar content is aggregated in a collapsible thread, which you can collapse to avoid all the social media noise and focus on real interactions.
It also captures gestures (like Likes on Facebook and diggs on Digg) around your posts and presents it all – comments and gestures, in a stream-lined visuaaly appealing and clutter-less stream. SInce, you are using your existing profile from the Social Media, it is also easy to connect with the website. You can also keep track of the discussions happening around a specific post by subscribing to it.
What’s more: you can also integrate media in your comments like YouTube videos and images (even from your desktop) and it will all appear in-line with the comment. It also supports all the major blogging platforms and is very easy to integrate. Plus has a huge list of features worth checking out.
Echo is also conveniently priced starting at USD 12/year but going as high as USD 2000/year for heavy traffic services. It really gives me the shivers if the higher-end features are worth it. I remember talking to some of my developer friends for the development of such a tool for Wordpress as I desperately needed it. They were of the opinion it was not technically feasible at the time. I am glad Echo is here to fill that gap.
Watch the introduction video to Echo here:
You should also check out these screencasts for the various functionalities of Echo.
You can also say: Disqus and IntenseDebate are already doing this. Yes and No. They are trying to achieve the same objective with different approaches. Next up: We Will be seeing how the three systems work and what is different in each of the offerings.
So, Is anyone using Echo? Guy Kawasaki is. So is LalaWag. Mashable didn’t have a favorable experience, while TechCrunchIT only experimented with it. Technorati uses Echo. Even TechCrunch found it interesting before finally moving on to Disqus. Our verdict – its working out well for us, but bull! like we have the traffic.
If you want to see Echo in action, try out the comment form on this post. Yup! We are powered by Echo. And if you are also using Echo, we would appreciate your feedback and do share your experiences.
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Author: Kinshuk Sunil (72 Articles)
Kinshuk Sunil is the founder of the WiSy Blog. An active evangelist for Open Source and a enthusiast Game Designer, Kinshuk focuses on reviewing Softwares, Services and Games here. However, a jack of all trades, Kinshuk can be found talking about almost everything. Catch up with him on twitter @kinshuksunil.
