How to keep track of replies to your comments

When I first started participating in blog discussions, I wished there were a more efficient system. I wanted a tool to notify me whenever someone replied to a comment I wrote on any blog post. I tried two solutions that didn’t work:

• Manual search on Google Reader. Whenever I wrote a comment to which I expected a response, I subscribed to the post’s comment feed on Google Reader. All comment feeds went into one folder. Every once in a while, I searched the folder for my name, and thus saw all the comments directed to me. Why it didn’t work: It was tedious to subscribe to post comment feeds and to do manual searches.

• Subscribe to Comments. This is a popular WordPress plug-in that allows anyone to subscribe to comments on chosen posts. New comments were sent to my email as they arrived, and I read them when I had time. Why it didn’t work: I still received all the comments on each post—not just replies to my own. This was a big problem for the more popular blogs, and was a bigger waste of time than manual searching. Besides, not all blogs have this plug-in installed.

Then I read about Yahoo! Pipes, and I knew I had found my solution.

Keep track of comment replies with Yahoo! Pipes

Here’s how to be notified of direct replies to your comments using Yahoo! Pipes. All you need is a Yahoo! account and some spare time.

1. Fetch your feeds. Fetch the comment feeds of all the blogs you comment on. It’s likely that you read and like posts from the same blogs. Take the feed of the entire blog, not individual posts, so you don’t have to keep adding new items all the time. (I really should have thought of this before; I could have used it with my Google Reader search solution!) Comment feeds can usually be found in this address format: http://blog.com/comments/feed.
2. Filter your feeds. Permit only feed items that contain your name to come through. Comments that are addressed to you will have your name in the description. If you’d also like to keep track of comments you’ve written, permit items with your name in the title. Remember to include all the names that you comment with and/or that people might use to address you.
3. Run the pipe. Once you run the pipe, Yahoo! Pipes can render the output as an RSS feed. Subscribe to this feed using your favorite feed reader.

Use Yahoo! Pipes to keep track of comment replies

There are limitations, of course. If you have a very common first name, you may receive comments that aren’t addressed to you. Also, for blogs with threaded comments enabled, people may not mention your name when replying to you.

But if you’re willing to navigate through the Pipes and are okay with having to add newly discovered blogs from time to time, it’s a great solution. You have one feed to subscribe to, and there are no searches required. Receiving comment replies is fast and easy.