TechCrunch has information on a service that I know will interest some ProBlogger readers seeking to create discussion around their posts. It’s called 3bubbles (to launch next week) and is an Ajax based chat system that you can add to your blog posts (via your templates) which will allow readers to have a chat (live) about the post.
What is doubly interesting to Pro Bloggers is that they are planning to integrate advertising into the system and will share revenue earned with bloggers.
It’s definitely an interesting idea and one that will be especially useful on highly trafficked blogs where there is critical mass to make it work, particularly on their most recent posts. I know that comments appear on my posts within minutes of me posting here at ProBlogger and so it could well work and help create a more dynamic environment – however on some of my less popular blogs I’m unsure how it would go.
The other implication of 3bubbles will be upon comments sections which one would presume would be used less. One of the advantages of comments is that they become a permanent part of your blog’s page – a permanent record that is easy to find and that becomes indexed in search engines along with your post.
From what I can see of the screen shots of 3bubbles they do allow readers to view previous messages.
I’ll be interested to see what this service is like, particularly the way that they allow bloggers to deal with chats that get out of hand (I don’t particularly want people using a chat window on my blogs to abuse each other, promote their own stuff in a spammy way etc).
I’ve got my reservations – but will hold off on judging it til I get to see it in action.
