Subject: Re: product questions 
Date: Fri, 13 Jun 2003 08:51:21 -0400 

Hi George, I'll try to answer your questions below. We're about to release
QuickTopic Pro, which has me pretty busy. An overarching answer is that
QuickTopic really isn't mainly intended as a commenting system for blogs,
and given that bloggers already often pay for blogging software or use only
free stuff, I'm not incented to have hundreds of new free QuickTopic boards
per person, one for each blog post.

I've discussed with several bloggers ways to make QuickTopic much more
efficient for blog commenting, but in the end the question came back to
cost. Once we've released QT Pro, we'll have the chance to look at whether
it makes sense to build a blog-comment-oriented version (or simply add
blogger-oriented features), but the question of incentive will still be
there. Any suggestions anyone has in this area (esp. like "I'd pay $X a year
for that") are welcome.

Best,
Steve Yost
QuickTopic

----- Original Message ----- 
Sent: Friday, June 13, 2003 1:36 AM
Subject: product questions


> Dear QuickTopic:
>
> I have a few questions as per this following entry in my blog.
>
> "QuickTopic.com was free and really easy to set up. It works like a charm. I like how as an
> administrator I can check to see which posts (or topics in Quick Topic parlance) are getting
> comments (or posts as per QT) and when. Their service also provides some data as to the popularity
> of topics. There are however several issues, which I will email to Quick Topic.
>
> * The topics list is sorted by latest post. It would be nice to be able to sort it by other fields
> such as topic name or number of posts per topic.

Yes, especially when you have hundreds of topics as you would with blog commenting.


>
> * It's nice that we have the option to be emailed if a topic receives posts, but you have to do
> this for each topic. Is there an option to have an email sent whenever any of my topics receives a
> post/comment at all?

Yes, that would be a good blogger-oriented feature too.

>
> * If months from now I decide to get rid of a topic in Quick Topic, then what will the the script
> in my blog return? Will the script err? Will it keep the last number of comments or will it show
> that there are no comments? Will the comment link deactivate?

Yes, you'll get script errors. Again a feature that could be made better for bloggers.

>
> * Why doesn't Quick Topic mention their bookmarklet on their site when it is pretty clearly linked
> to on BoingBoing.net?

Again, I don't really want to encourage blogger use of QuickTopic until the
above issues and the cost issue are solved.

>
> I suppose if I made my own commenting system or used one that's part of a blogging system, it
> would be much easier. However, Quick Topic is still an excellent system."
>
> -George Hernandez