Conversation Consolidation: JS-Kit To Acquire coComment? (Update: No)

We’re still looking to confirm, but alarm:clock says they’ve learned that web widget provider JS-Kit has agreed to acquire conversation tracking service coComment.

Update: looks like alarm:clock jumped the shark gun on this one. coComment CEO Matt Colebourne got back to our e-mail and says rumors about an acquisition are false, and that there will be an announcement about a partnership or some other kind of collaboration between the two startups soon. JS-Kit’s Chris Saad (who is also co-founder of DataPortability and Media 2.0 Workgroup) checked in as well to say there will be an announcement soon, yet declines to share details.

Update 2 with details of the announcement made:

Henceforth, coComment will automatically track comments from all sites enabled with JS-Kit Commenting, on a fully opt-in/out basis, so brand owners can easily follow consumer opinions on more than 600,000 sites. coComment will now offer JS-Kit commenting (and Rating, Reviews and Polls) to sites. coComment and JS-Kit confirmed that all existing users of coComment’s Site Comments engine will continue to be fully supported and will not be inconvenienced.

JS-Kit raised a total of $4.8 million in two rounds, the Series B for $3.6 million dating back less than a month. coComment was backed by even more venture capital: it had raised a total of $5.6 million from Swisscom and the Japanese Netage Capital Partners. This leads us to believe coComment simply ran out of money and chose to merge with a company offering a similar service rather than dying. Alarm:clock adds that coComment’s US employees (their headquarters are in Switzerland) are being offered jobs at JS-Kit or unceremonously fired.

coComment is a service that essentially lets people keep track of all their separate comments and discussions across the web, notifying users of newly posted comments while displaying any comments and conversations that a user may be tracking on sites such as blogs, news, photo sharing, and social bookmarking sites.

JS-Kit’s widget library already includes a commenting system, as well as ratings, polls and reviews, all of which can be embedded on a web page with a short snippet of code. Over the summer, JS-Kit acquired HaloScan, another commenting system, to improve its global profiles and better integrate with blog platforms.

Hence the title of consolidation in the online conversation world. You may remember SezWho acquired a contextual analysis startup called Tejit last May, and Automattic (the company behind WordPress) also made two acquisitions in this space after last summer: Intense Debate and Polldaddy.

Other players include Disqus and Tangler.