JS-Kit Officially Renamed Echo, Continues To Innovate With Real-Time Commenting System

With the success of the JS-Kit Commenting System “Echo” it was only a matter of time before the company took on the name full time. Now JS-Kit will be known from this point forward as “Echo.”

Echo provides blog owners with a ton of customizable information, including “Whirlpools” which automatically consolidate conversations, a “pause” feature which provides the ability to pause dynamic streams, “slipstreams” which can divide out comments and gestures, ensuring commenting doesn’t become jumbled up. Then of course there’s the company “Social Likes” option which actually provides a user avatar with the likes screen, adding a sense of community to the users commenting.

The customization of realtime streams will first be implemented on several of the companies core customer sites including: CBS/CNet, Discovery News, Dow Jones Local Media Group, Hearst Digital News, The Press Enterprise, CanWest, Technorati and KQED (an NPR and PBS affiliate).

In terms of numbers, Echo publishers on a conference call today mentioned that some of their commenting was up by 10x for some highly engaged articles, with an average of two to three time increases in user engagement.

The Echo team also mentioned that the time of engagement has increased for many sites, Inquisitr included, as users tend to engage more actively when comments are provided in any type of real-time format.

They’ve also found that many sites end up with active conversations within the commenting system, sometimes which actually provide more information than the original content being commented upon, another aspect that helps ensure longer on-site times and therefore stronger user engagement.

So how important is Echo to today’s website owners. Here’s a comment from The Press Enterprise:

“Echo challenges the notion that comments are static, isolated events. Echo Streams liberate the ‘comment’ with thoughts from social web and a dynamic conversation that encourages participation and sharing.”

While Down Jones Local Media group Product Manager Sean Polay added

“Echo is the nexus for community conversation regardless of where it takes place is truly leveraging the strengths of the medium and exactly where we need to be as a digital content provider and engager.”

If you haven’t tried out Echo yet, it’s a great time to be a part of their innovations and we expect to see plenty more from their team.

Update: For the time-being you can still find the system at JS-Kit.com with a new site to be named at a later date.