If you follow me on Twitter, you already know I’m a Backtype evangelist, touting the product in 140-character snippets that couldn’t possibly capture all of the praise that I have for the service — or the crew behind it.  Nor does it even begin to scratch the surface of the many unique and valuable benefits that Backtype offers. 

For those of you who aren’t familiar with Backtype, at the core, it’s a comment aggregator that extracts all of the comments across the blogosphere and sorts them by user (based on information such as name, email address and website included in the required comment fields).  You can then claim your comments by setting up an account and profile page, which becomes a central repository of your commenting history.

But it’s so much more than that.  Like most social networking sites, you can follow other users and be alerted of each comment they make across the web.  Many don’t realize the tremendous asset that actually is as you can follow high profile bloggers such as Robert Scoble and Jeremiah Owyang to see their latest comments, which gives you direct access into whose blogs they are reading. 

It also allows you to discover new blogs, and connect with other engaged users on a variety of topics.  Boom.  You’ve just expanded your network with quality, like-minded connections you may never have found.  You’ve also increased your online visibility, and created a vehicle through which you can demonstrate your thinking, writing ability and point of view, areas that are invaluable for a consultant to highlight with potential clients, as well as in developing thought leadership around a specific subject matter or scope of expertise.   It also reinforces a community of sharing, participating in conversations via — and sparked by — comments that would have otherwise drowned in an overly blog saturated space.   

To help explain the concept and idea behind Backtype better, I sought out Mike Montano, who co-founded the service with Christopher Golda, to conduct an interview, and being the warm, customer-oriented person that he is, he happily agreed.

Why did you decide to create Backtype?

We wanted to be able to follow people’s comments. Despite having much greater ambitions today, we created BackType to solve that very simple problem we were having.

What were you and Christopher doing before Backtype?  What are your backgrounds?

Before starting BackType, Christopher and I ran another service called IPartee during our final year of university. We’ve been friends since high school and both studied Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Toronto.

What has the response been like so far?  How have blog owners reacted to the service?

Since the day we launched, we’ve received lots of great feedback. One of the best responses we get is when bloggers tell us that they notice BackType showing up in their “Top Referrers” list — we’re very happy to reward bloggers for starting and curating great conversations.

Have you noticed any trends with the types of people who are signing up most?  Do you have a strong blogger audience?

A lot of comment authors that use BackType are bloggers, mainly because our service is a lot more useful when you attribute your comments to your URL (typically a blog).  A trend we’ve noticed is that many of our users are also professionals in marketing or public relations.

How would you describe the concept of Backtype to a newbie?  What would you list as the main benefit(s) of the service?

The benefit of using BackType is threefold: the ability to find, follow and share comments. Generally, people sign up for BackType so they can claim comments they’ve written on blogs and other social media sites, follow people that interest them, and share their comments on services like FriendFeed and Twitter. Following the popularity of services like Google Alerts, BackType also has a service (called BackType Alerts) that notifies you whenever a particular search term is mentioned in comments. That’s particularly useful if you have your own company or look to join in on conversations about a particular industry or subject matter.

What are some of the new features you’ve rolled out?  What future plans do you have in the works?

We’re working on a major release right now, and we’re also planning to work a lot more with other companies. Lately, we’ve been adding a lot of new sources for comment-like data: answers, reviews, etc. That’s something that will continue as we strive to cover more and more social media.

Discovery is beginning to get a lot of mainstream attention.  What do you think is the single most compelling aspect of discoverability?

I think that the most compelling aspect of discoverability is trust. Whether it’s a person on Twitter or Techmeme’s algorithm, you need to trust whatever is surfacing content and making it discoverable. At BackType, we help surface the comment authors and blogs that comments come from.

What services do you think are doing it well?

Twitter is particularly nice for discovering new content. You can follow people like Tim O’Reilly and you’ll be exposed to new sources and content every single day.

Can you share your business model?

Online conversations are a valuable subset of information online. As we organize all that information, we’re discovering new and interesting ways to create value around it. We think there are plenty of ways to make money helping publishers, advertisers and marketers be more productive and effective at what they do.

You have the most responsive customer support I’ve ever experienced with a free — or even, paid — service.  Was support built into your strategy?  What monitoring tools do you use to stay on top of the questions/feedback?

Thanks! Support wasn’t built into our strategy per se, but it’s something that we identified as being very important early on. We learn a lot from our users, so it’s definitely worth the time we invest in it. To help us, we use a small set of (free) tools: BackType Alerts, FriendFeed Search, Search.Twitter.com, and Google Alerts (though they’ve gotten a lot worse lately).

How would you define your commitment to your users?

For us, it’s all about creating value for our users. Everything we do is committed to that goal.

If you weren’t developing websites, what would you be doing?

I would probably be building something else. Previously I worked at RIM on the BlackBerry Bold and really enjoyed it from a technical standpoint. I wouldn’t limit myself to just building web services, but the thing I really like about developing them is being able to build, release, and make mistakes (and learn!) quickly.

If you could change one thing about the current state of the web, what would it be?

I’d make it more open. It’s unfortunate to see established services like Facebook keep their doors shut to developers, despite the massive amounts of value they could potentially unlock. Look at how valuable Twitter has become, not because of new features, reliability, or “strategy,” but solely because of its openness.

What is the best nugget of wisdom you’ve gleaned through the experience of building a web service?

We learned a lot from the mistakes we made with IPartee and BackType. The most important thing I’ve learned is to “release early,  release often.”

 

And therein lies the key — discovery.  Engines like Mr. Tweet also run on this premise, linking users with relevant contacts based on a variety of factors designed to enhance your online experience, and build and strengthen relationships.  Ming Yeow, founder of Mr. Tweet  says ‘discovery is the new cocaine’ and as the web continues to evolve and Marta Strickland’s party host concept becomes the norm, I predict we will see more services like these popping up, effectively turning down the noise while increasing the volume of quality conversations and connections.

You can follow Backtype on Twitter, and feel free to check out my customized Backtype comment page.