Report: JS-Kit Acquires CoComment
Comments are the lifeblood of blogging and JS-Kit becomes the latest company seeking to cash-in, according to reports Saturday. JS-Kit, maker of a number of comment-related blogging widgets, took some of its $4.8 million in venture funding and bought competitor coComment.
The deal, yet to be confirmed, may have been done after the Swiss-based coComment burned through $5.6 million from Zurich and Japanese investors, tech venturing funding blog alarm:clock wrote Friday.
The coComment service lets blog users track their own and others’ comments on blogs and other social networking sites.
“But aside from a few low-brow ads on their site, we don’t think the company was even close to making serious coin,” according to the site.
The straw that broke coComment’s back may have been lack of success in getting a second round of funding. Along with the inability to earn money from blog comments, investor SwissCom was also have money trouble, the report said.
As a result of the reported deal, coComment’s U.S. employees have the choice of either working for JS-Kit or unemployment.
The commenting arena has become a focus of heated competition. Prior to snapping-up coComment, JS-Kit acquired this summer commenting service HaloScan for an undisclosed amount. Blogging giant Automattic also acquired IntenseDebate, who’s commenting technology will be rolled into the upcoming version 2.7 of the WordPress blogging software. In October, Automattic pulled the checkbook out again, buying Irish PollDaddy.
Comments will be able to get you the traffic only if they are relevant to the site/blog to which you are attempting to direct them to. Hopping on to the comment bandwagon indiscreetly will land you no where in your quest for that elusive web traffic.
Although only relevant comments will attract traffic for bloggers, it is not so important for comment companies. Consider that around 89 percent of comments are spam, yet comment spam-catcher Askimet is one of Automattic’s most valuable products.