My sense is comment search is going to be your “killer app”, while the “follow” feature will an interesting but secondary feature. Of course, I could be dead wrong. In any event, I think you’ve got something with interesting potential.

Mark

Please feel free to shoot me an email mm [at] backtype [dot] com — so we can figure out what is confusing about the setup and FAQ.

Mark, thanks again for writing about us. We’ve seen interest in doing both — and we’re trying to figure out now what people care about most. One simple reason to follow someone’s comments, IMO, is if you like what they write in blogs and want to see what they are saying elsewhere, this is how. And I know from doing this I’ve been able to discover some awesome posts and discussions that I missed in my feed reader. I’m eager to see if other people are finding that following comment authors is useful for this reason.

Mark

Before you know it, you could see the Social Media Gray Scale where new services were rated based on an algorithm based on a keyword analysis of your reviews.

I think BackType could be intriguing. I’m not quite sure about the “follow” aspect yet but I can definitely see its potential as a search tool.

Mark

Would you prefer I give numerical ratings to services for comparison purposes? I think BackType is pretty cool. If I’ve been overweighted to date with FriendFeed/Strands/SocialMedian, that’s because I like that type of service, and get it.

But I think BackType has the potential to be as relevant as Technorati (in a good way), Google Blog Search or Summize. It’s one to watch for sure.

If possible, I try to add a different perspective on the news, especially news that attracts a lot of attention given much of the coverage tends to be alone the same lines.

It will be interesting to see how BackType makes money. I would not be surprised if it and Disqus do something together given they have complementary businesses.