Let's give them something to talk about...

You walk into a room at a large party... Most of the people you don't know. There is a lot of people, deafening noise and liberal amounts of laughter. You wander around until you hear a phrase, a keyword that catches your attention. You join that circle, perhaps listening first and then take the opportunity to chime in, make a comment and introduce yourself. It appears you have a lot in common. When the night is done, you've made a few friends, learnt a couple of things and shared a bit of yourself and your experiences.

Fast forward... You wander into the blogosphere, most of the people you don't know... the rest of the description mirrors what I've described above. You get the picture.

At TheGoodBlogs, we took tagging and trackbacks to another level last week, TheGoodBlogs Conversations. Like other tags, you would tag your blog post with our tag. But the twist is we let you put an extra identifier in the tag (while remaining in compliance with all common tagging practices). The extra identifier makes your general tag a little more unique. Others who specifically want to discuss your post on their blog can add that tag to their post. Unlike trackbacks which take you to a specific post, clicking on TheGoodBlogs conversation tag takes you to a page that has all the threads around that conversation. Search engines and the like can use TheGoodBlogs tags and categorize you appropriately. But because of our conversation id, you'll have a unique page for each conversation at TheGoodBlogs. Each page will carry your post and posts from other bloggers who have opted in to join your conversation by adding your tag.

We think it's pretty neat stuff. I hope all our bloggers will try it. I think they'll find interesting discussions happening in a distributed way with TheGoodBlogs pulling each conversation together. I know they'll make a few friends along the way. Isn't that what building personal communities is all about?

BTW: In the spirit of Valentine's month, we've started a couple of conversations already. Come on, GoodBloggers, make some noise! (err... I mean conversations!)