Suddenly blog commenting is a hot space

It appears a lot of people want to get into the blog comment space in the US. SezWho has raised a $1 million series A round from KPG Ventures, which makes it the best funded of the small group of startups currently trying to leverage the community for commenters. SezWho joins Disqus and Intense Debate, among others, to recently launch.
SezWho doesn’t wrap a social network around comments, but adds ratings and reputations to blog comments via WordPress and MovableType plug-ins. So far it has 300 sites using its system. It also has a “Red Carpet” widget that highlights a site’s top rated commentors to encourage more participation. Readers can sort the comments based on these ratings. The idea is to drive traffic across all SezWho enabled blogs, thus incentivising the blog to install the widget.

Disqus is a javascript embed or blog plug-in (WordPress, Blogger, TypePad, MovableType) that enhances blog comments and integrates it with a fully moderated community forum. Then there’s Tangler, another commenting system attached to forums. And CoComment recently landed itself in London to throw a drinks party in an attempt to sell its service into bigger sites.

Meanwhile the tiny UK-based fav.or.it – yes, those guys with the impossible to type name – are still prepping their site while juggling chats with potential investors. Fav.or.it will have a multi-faceted service but more importantly it will aggregate comments and send them back through the standard technologies already available. The plug-in services, like Disqus et al, are more likely – by contrast – to fragment blog comments and leave everyone with non-standard blogs.

It’s going to be interesting to see how all this plays out. Who knew simple old blog comments would come to this?