Next Generation of TalkDigger Demos Available

July 06th, 2006 | Category: Feedback, Social Media, Search Strategy

Talkdigger could evolve to Talk “Finder” and Talk “Joiner”
I’ve been a big user of Talkdigger, recommended it at conferences and to friends. Talkdigger is an “Index Aggregator” it pulls data from all the major blog indexers like technorati, googleblog, bloglines, feedster, msnsearch, google, yahoo, dig.

I’ve found a few users for it outside of blogs, it can find out who’s talking about your ‘public’ website, or even who’s linking to your flickr photos (I showed this trick to Thomas Hawk at Bloggercon) This is a must use product for those who are watching a companies online reputation (What I call blog angels).
Here’s how they describe themselves

“Talk Digger is a new way to find, follow and join discussions evolving on the Web. So you have three elements:

(1) finding discussions, (2) following discussions and (3) joining discussions.

With the current version of Talk Digger, users get stuck at step one. These new improvements to Talk Digger will let its users to go ahead with the step two and three.

With these new features, Talk Digger will become a social platform that helps people to connect with other people that follow the same stories (the premise here is that people that follow the same discussions will also have some personal and professional interests in common). It will also become a search engine of its own, and not only a meta-one.“

The founder Frederick Giasson (his product blog) has provided some demos of the upcoming features, this comes across as a next generation vertical search engine as well as creating features that resemble social sites for bloggers.

Demos of next generation:

The Talk Digger home page.
A Talk Digger conversation page. This is the core section of the system.
A user profile page.
A user page.
A user tracking page.
The Talk Digger search engine.

There’s a sign up for the ‘alpha release’ for anyone that wants to demo the next generation

Recommendations (you leave your own below)

Interesting concept to build a social site as an ‘overlay’ over existing bloggers
Talk Digger still needs to have search queries embedded in the HTML address.
Time to update the look and feel –perhaps consider hiring a web designer (here’s some resources on Design 2.0).
Consider hiring a Marketer to help with Copy, oversee design, and blogger relations.
Empower embedded plugins bloggers can put into their blog and display results.
Map mashup is cool –why not partner with frappr?
Another user profile page? ack, the world can’t take another place to put our data –make sure we can link to our ‘about’ pages on our blogs
Consider tying this into techmeme.com, tailrank, and other meme trackers –there’s some relevancy.
Make sure you’ve ability to export some of these, maybe RSS, or back to my suggestion about the HTML query. I know developers will want to tie into this –make it ‘open’.
Keep up this hobby/passion Fred!

Human side of Fred
Although I’ve never met Frederick, he’s shared with me that he’s a web developer living in Quebec. He’s travels a lot and has some pictures of his journeys to Nepal (He must have found his inner self balance karma one with the blogosphere ideals way up here) He’s got other pictures here. (Being a photo geek, I find this type of online sharing cool)

Note: Non paid review
Web is my passion. I’m not being paid to do this –this is an honest and open review by Web Strategist, Jeremiah Owyang. If I find it interesting I’ll give it an honest review –good or bad.
Edit:Thomas Hawk finds Talkdigger intersting too!

8 Comments so far

Fred July 7th, 2006 6:14 am

Hi Jeremiah!

Wow, this is a really great review, it’s really nice from you. I particularly appreciate the “human side of fred” section

Okay, you bring great points about Talk Digger only by checking at the screenshots, and there is a couple of answers to them:

#2: what do you mean? Having the search string visible in the URL of the search page? Like any other search engines? Right now it is. Is it really what you want?

#3: I totally agree. However, it is always the same thing: money. I am definitely not a web designer (the graphical point of view) but my skills really upgraded in the last years, however, it is sure that it is in no point comparable to the Digg.com interface.

#4: Yes, particularly for the copy thing Same problem as #3: money. The other problem is that I am French and I really don’t master the subtleties of the English language (idioms, collocations, etc). I do my best, but it’s clearly not enough.

#5: Yes, already on my todo list since the beginning of Talk Digger (even before I was thinking about that new version). However it is always the same problem: computer power. If everything go fine with that new version, we could see such a feature appear in 4 or 6 months.

#6: Good question

#7: Hooo yeah! And it is something Talk Digger try to solve. Check that blog post I wrote exactly about that problem.

#8 Good idea, I’ll start by finishing the prototype, get some content, and then I’ll check that, it is sure that it could be really interesting.

#9: Hehhehe, don’t worry for that Many data is available by RSS feeds, but all Talk Digger’s content is make available by ontologies like SIOC, FOAF, DC, GEO, etc. Check the posts in the “talkdigger->semantic web” section on my blog.

#10: Thanks you Jeremiah!

The two biggest problems you pointed out: design and copy have the same roots: money. The thing is that developing Talk Digger is a part time job right now for me (about 30 hours per week since 5 months for this new version) and I have to get contracts here and there to pay my bills. Considering that, I have no money to hire people to work on that right now. However, I hope that the situation change soon.

My first priority is to get things done with that prototype, and then I’ll check what I can do with these two crucial questions.

Thanks for everything Jeremiah!

Take care,

Salutations,

Fred
jeremiah_owyang July 7th, 2006 6:50 am

Thanks, I’ll do a better review once I’m given access to the Alpha test.

2: Yes, I really do want to have a URL that when I click on it it opens the talk digger results

Kind of like this URL with Google Images that lets me show all pics of “Fred”
http://images.google.com/images?q=fred&hl=en&btnG=Search+Images

3: Please don’t take what I said as an insult, for one individual that’s covering all the bases you’ve done a great job. Try talking to the 37 Signals folks or the Web 2.0 show, I heard on one of their podcasts (I think) that sometimes they’re willing to trade services for services. Find someone to partner with.

4: Kudos to you Fred to master a second language and market a product in it. This is something I can’t do with success, so please be encouraged, not discouraged. Consider parterning here with someone. There are quite a few bloggers out there who may be of assistance. It’s possible the design partner I mention above can assist with this.

I suggest this as with marketing you can extend your reach so much farther –as I know you’ve got a good product that will be great.

5: Consider talking to some other plugin services. Do you know James Kim from opinmind.com? Talk to him. Six apart launched a ton of plugins “widgets” –they call it? Could be some opportunity there.

6: back at ya!

7: FOAF huh? Is this tied to Cantor’s Microformats? Be sure to check that out –it may be getting more traction. I assume they will have a HProfile card that will let one have such data for a personal profile.

8: Good luck

9: Good stuff. I’m not a developer, but I heard the people’s suggestions at Bloggercon, devs want open –and as I understand it, the companies that are willing to be ‘open’ thrive.

Keep at it man –this is a valuable tool and can be more valuable.

Oh and talk to the flickr team and zooomr.com (Thomas Hawk) about what you’re doing –they really need a way to manage or show trackbacks. This was discussed between me and a few others.

Thanks for being so open minded to my suggestions, I provide them as support and spirit of making something great into best.

jko
Jim Durbin July 7th, 2006 6:56 am

I love Talkdigger, and Fred is a good guy, and we wish him the best.

(This is an unpaid comment endorsement)
jeremiah_owyang July 7th, 2006 7:05 am

Thanks Jim –do we all have to leave disclaimers now for everything?

(This is an unpaid comment response to an unpaid comment endorsement)
Fred July 7th, 2006 9:46 am

Hi Jeremiah!

#2: yup, there is already one, don’t worry

#3: Hehehhe, don’t worry; I am never insulted by anything. I have my strength and weakness and you pointed out the two majors: design and English. However, what is fantastic is that in both cases I increased my skills a lot in the past year.

#4: Nah, I am not discouraged: I can’t be when I check my English skills two years ago and my English skills now.

Yup, I’ll have to partner with someone for all these considerations (English writing, design stuff, etc). So, I am open to partnership suggestions

I know I can’t do everything by my own, and that I’ll eventually have to get people on the project, I see that day coming! (At least, if everything go fine with the prototype hehehe)

#7: Nah, check that page to know what is a FOAF profile:

The FOAF Project

And also check that page to know how it is used within Talk Digger:

Communities’ websites should use FOAF profiles to help users managing their online persona

#9: they will have to; otherwise they will miss the boat that is coming in the next 5 years to 10 years. The environment is changing, and sharing information, freely or so, between web services/applications is part of it.

#10: flick and zoomr… I hesitate to contact people right now for only one reason: I have nothing to show. Tell me if I am wrong, but I think I should wait until the prototype version is online before contacting these guys, no?

Certainly that I am open-minded to your suggestions, they are more than welcome, because I have so many things to learn (and I’ll have all my life long) so I have start right away, it’s certainly not the time to blind my mind by thinking that I have all right and nothing to learn from other people!

If Emerson said:

“Every man I meet is my superior in some way. In that, I lean of him.”

I think it apply to me too.

Thanks Jim! (This is an unpaid thank endorsement)

Take care guys,

Salutations,

Fred
Easton Ellsworth July 8th, 2006 8:08 am

Thanks, I’ll check this out, Jeremiah!
jeremiah_owyang July 8th, 2006 11:30 am

Cool Easton –you’ll find it useful.
Web Strategy by Jeremiah » TalkDigger Releases New Features September 5th, 2006 7:12 am

[…] In July, I was part of the Talkdigger beta preview, and I left my observations on this post. Fred the founder of Talkdigger, just let me know that his features have released. I’ve been using Talkdigger for a while, and have encouraged others, like Thomas Hawk to use it as it aggregates many of the blog indexers. (Does that make sense? An Index Aggregator?) He’s pumped up the latest to measure ‘conversations’. Some of the key features according to Fred are: “Find Web Conversations and discover interesting stuff - Find web sites linking to another web site. - See the relationship between conversations of the Web. - Browse the Web by browsing its conversations. - Discover interesting stuff by browsing effortlessly between conversations. […]