IM Bots: (Almost) Real-Time Blog Chat via IM

This post got me thinking about how you could integrate IM into blogs. Currently, if people communicate about a topic/post, they post a comment. Almost in real-time, others can be alerted of the new comments if they have the RSS Comments feed for the blog — or if they are using CoComment, or my blog is using ShareThis, which is a WordPress plug-in that allows commenters to subscribe to the post and are emailed whenever someone posts a new comment.

IM on websites is tough. As a reader, I enjoy reading the discussions that take place via comments on blog posts. If IM (or live chat) started to really take-off within websites, I think some great discussion could be lost. However, if it’s used to merely meet people and chat about things — great.

IDEA: I was trying to think of how else IM could be integrated. There are some great API’s out there that are allowing you to integrate IM into applications — AOL has their own API, then there’s IMified (although not sure this is opened up; but somehow they are communicating on all the popular IM networks).

Anyhow, AOL’s API allows you to create a bot, then if a user has that bot/username on their IM friend list, you can send that user stuff anytime you want. Couldn’t we all be posting comments on blogs via IM? Thus, if we are IM’d a new comment that appears on a specific blog post we’re tracking — we could just send an IM back and that’d be posted as a comment. If other users are doing this too, then you’re essentially IM’ing them, but through the comment system, which then gets recorded. But once again, maybe there’s going to be those very minimal (informal) comments — tons of them — as we all currently use IM for; whereas with blog comments, we are a little bit more formal typically.

What are some practical uses of IM bots that you see in the future? What are your ideas?

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  • http://techstbooks.wordpress.com Colin Dowling

    I think an excellent add on/tool for bloggers would be a real-time thread for comments, a hybrid between standard comment threads and IM. Integrating that tool in with standard IM apps like AOL, MSN, Yahoo, etc. would be an interesting way to bring traffic back to a comment pool.

    Perhaps the way to do it would be to mesh the RSS feed of comments with IM, essentially making the IM client an RSS reader of sorts.

  • http://www.thedeplorableword.net/ Tom

    If you had a checkbox right here that said “Notify me of Followup comments via IM ” I’d use it. If it was a centralised service like coComment then my website URL could be tied to an IM username.

  • http://www.StatTrack.net Chris

    You could require a minimum number of characters, that would eliminate the ‘yea’ and ‘cool’ comments, so people will add something of value. Of course, as I’m typing this, I’m thinking “how long is my comment?” … or just a notification via IM that sends you a link back to this page, where you can read an leave another comment.

  • http://www.vestedventures.com Steve Poland

    Zaptxt will provide IM alerts of RSS feeds. (via marshall kirkpatrick)

  • http://astartupaday.wordpress.com Kevin

    I think there’s room for both on a blog, IM to quickly chat with whomever else happens to be on the site, and comments that are meant to be a lasting contribution to the blog. People like leaving comments, too, I don’t think you’d necessarily lose that by adding an IM widget.

    BTW, try some of that EmergenC stuff, great for fending off upcoming colds. :)

  • http://lenno-cornish.livejournal.com Economic and Culture Observer (Lenno Cornish)

    Hi. I guess – if they connect blog with IM – then the NET will be sunk in the endless blah-blah. Also – the more rarely you write – may be the better you do it:)

  • http://www.mspy.com/ Trueman

    Since there are many IM (Instant Messaging) services around the world, such as GTalk, Skype, AIM, etc, and most people are using more than one of them, it will be more productive if you can manage all of your IM services with one tool.