WordPress Plugin: BackType Connect

When a news is doing the rounds in the internet world, a considerable amount of time is spent discovering the different opinions or views expressed by people all over the world. More often than not these discussions are carried out on social networking sites and blogs making search an uphill task. So how does one keep tabs of these views pertaining to a particular conversation? The can be addressed by a utility called BackType Connect.

BackType Connect is a utility developed by Y Combinator startup BackType. This utility allows users to find comments posted on other blogs, social networking sites such as Twitter and other services pertaining to a topic by entering the URL of the topic as a search criterion on their website. This particularly useful service has been developed as a plugin for WordPress allowing bloggers to integrate the features of this utility into their blog posts.

Value Additions

A few value adding features of this plugin are as follows.

Tracking and Consolidation: Readers can find articles, comments and active conversations about their topics of interest all consolidated in one area. Currently the plugin supports conversations from Twitter, FriendFeed, Digg, Reddit, Hacker News and few other blogs. Also bloggers can keep a track of their posts as to where readers are engaging in them.

Customizing: The plugin can be customized to serve according to the preferences of the blogger. The blogger can specify the sources from which the comments should be consolidated from. Also the blogger can ask the plugin to order the comments from different sources based on timestamp allowing readers to follows conversations as they happen or can group all of them at the end of the blog comments. Bloggers can also determine the number of comments from a particular source by adding a summary section.

However there could be some concern over the utilities ability to work to its full potential for larger posts.

Installation

Note: It is recommended that you backup your database before installing

1. Download the plugin from here.
2. Unzip the plugin and upload the backtype-connect directory to /wp-content/plugins/
3. Activate the plugin through the ‘Plugins’ menu in WordPress
4. Configure the plugin through the ‘Settings’ > ‘BackType Connect’ menu option
5. Click the ‘Enable’ button to start importing comments.

Upon installation and activation the plugin imports comments and conversations into the WordPress comment system for the particular blog using the URL as a query. It includes icons to the comments indicating the source of the comments, along with a footnote.

Points to Remember

1. Although this is a very useful plugin be advised that it could cause a little too much pain when used with all the functions enabled. Customize the plugin according to your preferences else your blog post might land up being flooded with new comments and conversations increasing noise in your blog.
2. To discover the full potential of BackType Connect sync would be necessary if you are using a comment system like Disqus or Intense Debate instead of the built in comment system of WordPress.

Remember to take care of these points and brace yourself to discover the potential of this utility.

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