BackType is the newest YCombinator startup to launch from their summer program. They’re a blog-comment focused startup – founders Christoper Golda and Michael Montano are for the first time aggregating all comments from millions of blogs into a single, searchable, parsable stream. Think Twitter for all comments on the web.
They are not like the recent barrage of startups focusing on cleaning up the comment experience on blogs – see Disqus, SezWho, JS-Kit, etc. Blogs (and even commenters) don’t have to actively participate to be included. Instead BackType is grabbing all comments from millions of blogs (via feeds and scraping) and adding them to the site.
Like Twitter it’s a gold mine of information. I tried searches for TechCrunch50, Obama and Olympics and got back all kinds of content that I would normally miss. RSS feeds for searches are also available.
You can also track by commenter. BackType aggregates comments made by a name that matches to a linked URL. So if you, like most people, leave comments with the same URL across multiple blogs, they will be aggregated. You can also claim an account, like i did, and have your comments aggregated even if you use different URLs. Since there is not authentication other than what people type into comment boxes, there’s a big fake comment problem. That can be fixed by turning moderation on so that you have to approve anything that goes under your name.
I like this one a lot.
This site is crazy impressive. Anytime I want to do research on what people are saying about a company, now I can go to backtype. I wonder if this is gonna make people think before commenting nonsense.
Random comments without any context. Quite usefull.
With links to the context though. Once these guys have analytics and reporting it’s going to be a market intelligence dream.
Agreed. You can’t dismiss a great idea simply because it hasn’t scaled yet. It’s like dismissing a train because the tracks haven’t been laid yet.
BackType’s a great idea — and the analytics will drive it’s value up. But I’m betting the cloning has already begun & they’ll have to hurry to stay in front.
Um, btw guys, I’m a web/db analytics dude (looking for a cool tech co)….HINT HINT.
http://identi.ca/twitter
It’s a great concept, but it doesn’t really work at this stage. I’m quite a frequent commenter in several blogs worldwide, but only can find one (!) single comment from me… if they extend their blog database, it will be a very useful tool, of course. So please, guys, hurry!
Hi Simon,
Thanks for the kind words. We’re working hard to support as many blogs as possible on backtype. Especially ones our users comment on.
Please feel free to send me an opml or an email letting me know where you comment so we can find your comments. mm [at] backtype [dot] com
Are comments not owned by their authors? What right do you have to archive, index and profit off them?
Can blog exclude themselves from your index?
@Jonno
Comments are absolutely owned by their authors and that’s why we want to attribute them to you. In the future, we will be offering an API so you can retrieve all your comments and display them in new, interesting ways. Here’s more info: http://blog.bac...shing-comments/
If you would like to be excluded from our index, you can. Our crawler honors robots.txt standards.
@Jonno
Are you new to the Internet? Heard of Google? This is the same idea, just in a narrow slice and more structured, presumably.
@Ryan Waggoner
No, it isn’t. Google doesn’t create full content feeds. In fact I’m quite sure I could win a law suit against backtype in Germany.
Ycombinator+comments+twitter
Could you imagine a better idea?
Go backtype!
Innovative? Fo shizzle!
Congratulations to Mike & Chris. I had the chance to meet them @ Mesh in Toronto this year and did a follow up interview with them about their YCombinator experience for StartupNorth. http://www.star...ichael-montano/
They are smart guys and I wish them the best. From when I first heard the idea I realized it was a simple and useful concept.
Watching the implementation come together has been fun.
Great job guys.
Love it. This is 10x more valuable than Summize/Twitter search in that it actually taps the discussion outside of the echo-chamber. If I (as a marketeer) was given the choice of giving up BackType and giving up Twitter Search/Track, I’d give up Twitter.
High five and congrats!
Quite obvious, real comments will be sure to provide more information than the 140-characters tweets. Besides, something tells me that there must be way much more people reading and commenting blogs than Twitter users
Enormous opportunities, really, especially with the approach of not making anyone install anything: they will have tons of content to pull and index and it will be way much more information than what coComment can provide since it is based on a plug-in installed by a user.
Really cool as an art piece. It would be fun if you could vote on them like bash.org.
The data flow is one-way, from the blogs to this search system. What meaning or context would a “vote” have in this case?
I like it but it also scares me a little.
ImageCo
cool, how are they going to make money… they will figure it out. “Twitter is a gold mine of information…” it so much faster to search twitter for something im looking for than do a borring old search on google.
Assuming of course, that Twitter’s search happens to be enabled that particular time period.
Though, of late, they have gotten better about downtime and everything. =]
I was hoping this would be something that limits comments to 140 characters…
I agree, congratulations to the founders! This is a lot of work put into an actual useful project, and it’s good to see it from Canadians!
Mike invited me to check out BackType a couple of weeks ago. I understood the concept instantly and found it valuable on my first visit – sure signs of a site likely to succeed. I use it as a way to track comments about our own startup. BackType seems to find things that the Google alerts miss. Great job guys!
Google alerts on steroids. Once they cover more blogs this will be incredibly useful.
Cool idea! Which probably I will use it in the future…
Backtype is new, and amazing, and I feel the same thrill I felt when I first learned about Twitter. Thanks, Mike & Chris, and thanks for the amazingly fast tech support (under 10 mins!).
Its so annoying to see all the YC people come and comment every YC product that comes through TC.
We get it youre in the club.
…Bottle full of bub
Look mami I edit hex if you’re into fixing bugs
I’m into hacking flex, I aint into techcrunch love
so come give comment hugz, YC always gettin snubbed
You are what is called a “fanboy” as it seems no matter what falls out of YC’s ass, you believe it is a work of art. You are not a rapper and certainly not an entrepreneur. Go get a job at yahoo.
@Certain – You are what is called a “troll”. I am both a rapper and an entrepreneur, as well as a rabbit and a sous-chef. I tried to get a job at yahoo but they told me I’m not productive enough, something about spending too much time having fun replying to a special Certain someone.
Very, very cool idea and excellent execution. I like the simplicity of the design and the ease of which I was able to claim my comments, follow my favorite bloggers and upload my picture. Great job guys, thoroughly impressed!
Thanks.
That’s really what inspired us to built BackType in the first place. There were all these great bloggers we enjoy reading, but we can’t see what they are saying outside of their blog posts. Now when they leave comments elsewhere we can find them, discover new posts, and join those conversations.
Let me know if you have any other feedback.
Lots of applauds for s company with a low barrier to entry and plenty of competitors. This is a feature, not an organization…yet. It could change, but VC looks less interesting at that point.
Your comment looks less interesting at this point. In fact, Billy, you remind us all that commenting on someone else’s business has the lowest barrier to entry of all activities. More than half the “features” written about on techcrunch don’t have clear barriers at first. This isn’t a damn powerplant, betamax, or pharmaceutical, it’s a fricken web service. So if it’s alright with you, we’ll just let them work on improving a useful product for now, and maybe cut back on the armchair VC shit show.
Best comment I’ve read all week Geoff.
“you remind us all that commenting on someone else’s business has the lowest barrier to entry of all activities.”
A perfect come-back if I’ve ever heard one. Owned.
Nice! I have to add that the naysayers always give me a great laugh. You almost never know who they are and if you do, it’s invariably someone who hasn’t started a business of their own before, on the web or off. Moreover, YC companies are “early-stage” companies. I never quite understand why people get in such a tizzy about a “product launch” not being everything it is supposed to be on day one. Like, gee, since they launched they can’t improve it anymore? So… game over?
It takes some skill and imagination to see the forest from the trees with a lot of these startups. Their young ideas and young products have lots of potential but they’re *young*, that’s the whole damn point. Most naysayers are frankly just too short-sighted (or are missing knowledge) to have any real credibility to their shallow comments.
Besides, most of those assholes are just web 2.0 “tourists” anyways who aren’t actually interested in a particular service for themselves; they just enjoy seeing their shit end up in the comments.
Ok, “George”
Let us wait see what amazing shit pile comes out of this organization and we can come back and point out that you blindly accepted this company b/c you are directly affiliated with y-combo.
Critical analysis is key for young start-ups and if you’ve never pitched, it’s no wonder why you think it is “less interesting”.
If VC is not the route this company is going, why bother with an incubator like y-combo?
Ycombitards are really touchy and wouldn’t know a good idea from a bad one. Like little whores running around screwin like rabbits
But rabbits are just so frickin cute, silly Billy Boy. You, on the other hand, need a slap.
You’re a little TC fanboy yourself, and you’re missing what the man himself is saying. It’s “useful”! Holy Crap! People like it! Imagine that.
What have you done lately that’s hard, interesting, or cool (besides actually manage to fulfill our collective TC Troll stereotypes)? Go ahead, throw it out here, we’ll all check it out. Here’s your chance for TechCrunch coverage, traffic, and feedback. Let’s go.
Billy, you’ve been really informative and helpful to the group. It’s good to see someone commenting in TC that’s “been there, done that” and knows all the ins and outs of starting a business. Tell us about your VC-ripe businesses; Just name your terms, all of us here would like to invest.
hah that was a nice sTroll down memory lane – how do i come up with so many zingers so consistently??
—
PS this comment may not be scraped, API’d, downloaded, read, redistributed, looked at, or sent through any tubes without the express written consent of gilltots and the NFL.
This looks really great as it’s working toward the ideal of a giant parsable and searchable global conversation ..
I agree, BackType has some serious potential… even just as a tremendous resource for watching where the experts are going
I just signed up for an account. It’s showing comments I have left on TC, Scobleizer and RWW to name a few. I’m also on Cocomment now.
I’m not sure how useful the site is, but am happy to spend a little more time figuring it out!
I’m not sure how to set up my account correctly though — when it asks me for the URLs I use to comment, do I have to enter *all* the sites I ever comment on or what…?!? Sorry for coming across like a n00b, but I’m kinda confused about the concept…
Ahh sorry for the confusion, those would be the websites you enter into the comment forms when you write your comments.
So for the comment you just made the URL is http://www.milesfiles.de/. If you add that to your account on backtype you’ll see the comment you just wrote as well as others made using that website.
Yup, I finally understood that…!
Thanls for the fast reply though…!
Never mind, I guess I got it now…! LOL
I suppose that means to enter the URLs I leave when I write a comment on some site…!? Oh well, to my apology — it’s 3 am over here and I haven’t had much sleep lately…
One more thing though: how does Backtype play together with the actual commenting services like Disqus, SezWho etc.?! Are these comments inclueded as well…?
If you don’t leave comments with a URL, feel free to use your BackType URL: http://www.back...m/YOUR_USERNAME
We support a number of different commenting services. We really love what Disqus is doing — and would like to explore more ways we can help them improve the conversations on blogs and other sites.
i dont get point the of this site
i can go to digg and search for articles
and read user comments there
so annoying.
+1 Mike. Open your freakin’ minds!!!
thanks mike.
That’s because you’re retarded.
Backtype > amazing. Well done guys!
Feels like Christmas – another startup this year to really get me pumped with excitement. First Evernote, then flowgram & now this.
solid potential {seesmic_video:{”url_thumbnail”:{”value”:”http://t.seesmic.com/thumbnail/rw5fPJgAow_th1.jpg”}”title”:{”value”:”solid potential ”}”videoUri”:{”value”:”http://www.seesmic.com/video/PudNubIdKN”}}}
Is it a Twitter for comments or a Technorati for comments?
I guess the Twitter comparison drives more traffic though.
Twitter = Hot.
Technorati = Not.
I think that new startup is going to make headlines over at Bloomberg. I wonder when they plan on going public with stock…:-)
http://www.ShawnDrewry.com
Nice job, guys.
Comments are too disconnected from the “primary” conversation to take seriously the notion that blogging is a 2-way conversation.
Really helpful and well executed.
Uhm, one more thing…just to make sure I understand the concept – I can only search for and read comments from people who are also registered on Backtype?! Or do the crawlers just collect anything they find…?
Really enjoying this site! It definitely shows that I don’t comment enough though, ha. Like friendfeed, it helps me find discussions that I’m interested in, and all of the guys I’m following on friendfeed seem to be listed, so that is a plus.
Like Gary said, I think this site has a lot of potential, and can’t wait to see where it goes.
Thanks for the comment. We’re hoping that attributing comments to their authors where they can be discovered and shared will help boost the incentive to write (great) comments.
Toying with it as we speak. I’ll have to determine how much I will actually use it, but at first glance it looks like it could be a productive tool. And I prefer tools over toys. This could become a serious useful tool. So far, thumbs up!
I’m just having a trial of it to experience the compliments.
People, this isn’t as new as you think. It is basically a knock off of Big Swerve that was acquired for little money after it gained no traction.
Maybe calling themselves “The Twitter of (Blank)” is part of the marketing plan.
A nice concept used there
Looks good. Just joined backtype!
Why do you continue to mention SezWho? They will be in the deadpool within a year.
I really like the simplicity of BackType. I’m looking forward to see how it evolves. Great work!
yeah the site works great!!! All my comments in TechCrunch are there…
Experience Backtype again.
Welp, looks like BackType will be joining summize on my igoogle page. If you run a site, you would be crazy not to use this.
Why I can’t see my comments in my site?
So I’m on Backtype now. I’d be curious to see what the overlap is between my RSS subscribers, my Twitter followers and my (eventual) Backtype followers. Is there a way of ascertaining who these people are short of a survey?
The OpenID integration is a missed opportunity. Anyone can create a profile claiming blogs as theirs. OpenID lets you confirm that a blog is actually yours, and it works across all the major blogging tools.
Currently on BackType, anyone can add comments attributed to a URL to their profile. This could evolve into a feature — for example, backtype.com/venturecapitalists.
Nobody “claims” a URL exclusively. However, in the future we will definitely be exploring that — we just weren’t aware that OpenID could help.
Thanks for the comment.
Hey dipshit, this YC and we dont say anything bad about them. Just nod and say it is awesome and how much youll use it and why these guys are doing something so great. we dont care about “open this or that”.
You will use it and like it.
You have been warned!
For a scintillating moment there, I feared that the Destroy Y Combinator Kiddies’ Hearts, Efforts, And Dreams (DYCKHEAD) comment network would fail to mobilize. I mean, here we have a YC startup that is getting >50% positive commentary, someone with credibility likes them (Arrington), and they might have a useful service. DEFCON 2 – Blast email to all trusted sarcasm artisans (hmm.. cc:TechStars):
сомядбе: иощ Ше коммелт!
In a mad rush, they flee from their homes underneath bridges (poor Wifi signals). Turn on Tor. Open trusted strategy handbook: Barriers to entry. All been done before. Imitation easy. Business model unclear. No traction in hours since launch. Deadpool joke. Groan about YC. Groan about TC – But continue to read it daily, for being snarky on TC provides the best masturbatory sense of self-actualization. The Brotherhood remains strong.
Especially as you are funded, you are in it for the money. Where is my share of you using my content without proper licencing rights?
Basically, you are scraping my content and display it without my consent. The fact that I comment on a blog like this or conciously add content through a site like discus does not make my content fair game for anybody else to scrape.
Do I see this to be useful? Yes. Is it a valuable ressource once filled? Yes. Could you have made a database from all those nuts early beta testers and how they handed over their blogs? Absolutly.
Am I amused to find my content in there displayed in a fashion I do not agree without being asked first? Absolutly not. Even less so as there is no way to opt out of where you should have asked in the first place.
Even more so since you yourself take protecting ‘your’ content seriously. From the T&C
“All trademarks not owned by BackType that appear on this Site are the property of their respective owners, who may or may not be affiliated with, connected to, or sponsored by BackType. BackType-originated content included on the Site, such as text, graphics, logos, data compilations and the compilation of all content on the Site, is the property of BackType and its licensors and protected by US and international copyright laws. Except as set out in these Terms, no reproduction of any BackType-originated content is permitted without written permission from BackType. User-posted content is copyrighted, and any use or reproduction of user-posted content must comply with the terms of the respective license(s) and must include a label indicating such license.”
btw this makes me rethink my idea to move my word to a more ’scrapeable’ plattform like wordpress.
Content owners can exclude themselves from our index the same way they exclude themselves from Google. If they don’t, we’ll drive traffic to their blogs if they get comments our users find interesting — similar to how Google drives traffic to websites that show up in search results.
I’ve written a post on our blog that tries to explain our motivation in a bit more detail:
http://blog.bac...shing-comments/
Wow. Are you for real? There is so much ridiculousness in your comment (and the related post on your blog) that I don’t even know where to start.
But then again, maybe that’s exactly why you don’t want your comments linked back to you.
Here’s a hint – if you don’t want your comments indexed, made searchable and displayed by search engines then maybe you should keep them on your own blog and disallow all web crawlers (with robots.txt).
FYI, Google, Yahoo and others have been doing stuff like this for over a decade. It’s called the internet.
Which is probably why you neither give your name or a link to find out more about you, right? It is easy – even without such a tool – to find out information about me. And instead of hiding behind a first name, I stand for what I write.
Which is besides the point. A company scraping content from other sites while at the same time prohibiting the same thing through their T&C without providing the value to me as Google and co begs to be called out on that.
I find it amazing that you think comments have so much value that they deserve to be protected. Some points:
1) They’re comments.
2) You’ve posted said comments in a ‘public’ place. I think it is generally accepted that when you post comments on a blog, you do so with the intention of having said comments read by as many people as possible.
3) If a site owner wants his site indexed by Backtype then it should be up to him. If you don’t like that policy then don’t post. Simple.
4) If you want your comments to be anonymous you’ve got the right to use a pseudonym (and refrain from linking back to your blog).
5) As for the T&C, you need to understand how copyright applies to data collections. Even if each item in the collection is copyrighted by someone else, the database as a whole can still be protected under another copyright by the entity that arranged and collected said database. Feel free to cut and paste various comments from Backtype’s site, but if you use automated means to download a significant portion of their database then I suspect they will invoke the T&C (as is their right).
6) Providing value: Do you block search engines from your site that you don’t personally use and provide little to no traffic to you? Why or why not?
7) Monetization. You weren’t monetizing your comments to begin with, so you have lost nothing. If you want to be compensated for Backtype’s monetization then maybe you ask them to send you a monthly check for $0.000001 (which would be your share).
9) For more insight try reading up on fair use doctrine. Specifically the parts about transformative use and impact on the copyright holder’s ability to monetize his/her work.
10) They’re comments!
This comment is hereby placed in the public domain.
Almost forget.
You went from saying the service is useful, to not useful (”providing value”) in the span of two posts. Which is it?
It isn’t remotely comprehensive enough. Give them time, I guess, but right now it isn’t indexing a lot of big sites. The results it does show are sparse and in many cases very old.
Great idea, but they need to execute better.
This is going to be a great source of information, specially with such good blog authors already a part of it
ideas for scaling?
http://identi.ca/twitter
Hi Maria,
I am checking out BackType also, but must figure out how to use it properly!
Ciao,
Lee
Sparkle Plenty Designs
http://www.Sparkle-Plenty.com
Hi Lee,
We’re going to be pushing out some changes tonight that hopefully make it easier to get started.
If there is anything in particular that is confusing you feel free to contact us:
http://www.back...ype.com/contact or support [at] backtype [dot] com