The social web - which allows everybody to participate - got a boost this week. That is, MSNBC.com, a joint venture between Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) and General Electric (NYSE: GE), agreed to buy Newsvine, a news site that allows for voting, comments and so on.

However, as the social web expands, it gets difficult to follow things. While a variety of services track blogs, there's not much in terms of following comments.

Well, that's what coComment is focused on. "Think of us as the Digg for comments," said Kristina Serafim, VP of Marketing at coComment, in a BloggingStocks interview.

And the site is growing. There are more than 550,000 users so far.

"User-generated comments about you or your company are likely to be fragmented across different sites, such as blogs, Yahoo (NASDAQ: YHOO), and so on," said Serafim. "But with coComment, we essentially put comments into a conversation."

Yes, the site is free, although coComment has plans for monetization. "There are display ads. Or, if users don't want them, they pay a fee for an ad-free environment. We also see opportunities for using the site as a large focus group."

And with the power of social media growing, I can see where companies will want to call on coComment for some help.

Tom Taulli is the author of various books, including The Complete M&A Handbook and The Edgar Online Guide to Decoding Financial Statements. He also operates DealProfiles.com.

coComment mines the social web originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Mon, 08 Oct 2007 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.