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Kwippy is a fun new service that allows you to post comments from Gtalk or Yahoo! It is very easy to get set up on kwippy, which is nice, and makes it a great site for introducing people to microblogging.

So, let’s get started!

Kwippy is in private beta right now. Beta means that the site is running, but might be taken down occasionally for upgrades, changes, etc. Of course, anymore, there’s not a lot of difference between a site that is ready for public use and one that’s in beta. Look at all the updates Microsoft sends out.

A private beta is one where you have to have an invite to join it. On kwippy, an invite has to be mailed to you, so either post a message on here and mention that you’d like an invite, or if you prefer, go to kwippy’s main page and ask for an invite to be sent to you.

Here are a few simple steps to give you a quick start to using kwippy:

1. Once you get your invite, click on the link and go register.
2. After you’ve registered, the next thing you should do is add kwippy to your IM.
   

   Click on Dashboard to bring up the IM instructions. Currently kwippy works with Gtalk and Yahoo! but there are plans for other IMs in the future.

   
3. After you have your IM set up, go back to your kwippy homepage and you’ll be asked if you want to integrate status changes with your kwippy page. Doing this will automatically post on kwippy whenever you make a status change on your IM.
   
   Note that you need to click the X, not the word here.
4. Now you’re ready to post! With kwippy, you have 2 choices. Either send a post to kwippy over your IM or go to your kwippy page and write a post.
   
5. Whenever someone responds to your kwips, you will be notified by IM. You can also choose to be notified by e-mail.
6. You can also respond to others kwips on the website. If you look at the picture above, you’ll see “go comment” underneath each. Clicking on that takes you to a kwip comment page. By the way, don’t worry if you have a lot to say, kwippy doesn’t have a text limit.
   

Now that everything’s set up, here are some other things to check out:

A social site is about friends, and kwippy is no exception. You have unlimited invites if you want to ask all your friends to come play and there are already a lot of great kwippers on the site.

Kwippy has a great search feature that allows you to either search for kwips or for people, so it’s easy to find friends from other sites. By the way, feel free to add me as a friend too.

To add or remove a friend, look to the right on the kwips board, directly underneath “everyone’s kwips” and click to follow or unfollow.

You can also click on change settings on a friend’s page and choose to subscribe to their kwips if you’d like to be notified over IM whenever they make one.

If you want to remember a kwip written either by you or someone else, you can mark it as a favorite. Simply click on the heart icon underneath the kwip.

To view kwips that you’ve marked as favorites, go to your page and look underneath your avatar. Click where it says the number of favorite kwips you have to go to your favorite kwips page. If someone marks one of your kwips as a favorite, you will receive a message letting you know.

You can also visit someone’s page and send a private kwip to them. You will get a notification when they respond to the message you sent, or when someone sends you a private kwip. If you are trying to reach a friend who hasn’t been on lately, you can also send them a Buzz, which is a kwip sent to the person and shows up in their inbox and as an IM message.

Just a couple more items to mention. Just like plurks and tweets, kwips are searchable on Google. They’re not showing up yet, but that’s because kwippy is a new site and likely still getting indexed.

Each page on kwippy can be subscribed to via RSS feed, so you can subscribe to your posts, friends’ posts, or even a single kwip that you want to keep up with the comments on.

In addition to kwippy’s search features, you can also find posts by using the url. Kwippy has one of most unique url set ups that I’ve ever seen, with the goal of making them “human readable”. So, if you know who wrote a kwip and when they wrote it, you can go right where you need to go to find the kwip.

Finally, if you are a fan of ping.fm, you’ll be happy to know that kwippy is there too! If you’re not on ping.fm and want to be, the most current code is “thispingsforyou”.

You may have noticed for the past couple weeks that I had a new comment system on my site.

I was trying out Disqus, a system that brings control of the comments back to the commenter. You see, just like I believe that NoFollow isnt’ fair to commenters, I also believe that you own the comments you write, although I am allowed full use of them when you post to my site. In the same manner, when I guest write a post on another site, I still own the article, but I am allowing them to use it for their own purposes.

I am no longer trying Disqus for a few reasons:

1. I was getting complaints about it. People weren’t being allowed to comment on my site until they’d registered at Disqus (and yes, I had it set to allow anoymous comments).
2. I’m working on an article where people can share their e-mail and get an invitation to kwippy. A quick search on Disqus didn’t show where I could access the e-mails, so I checked their forums. And couldn’t find a search feature. Yes, I can use Google site search to find what I need, but I’m sorry, that is something that should be easy to find.

To be honest, when I couldn’t find out how to easily access e-mails, I thought okay, I’ll just pause Disqus for right now, and go back and explore it more later.

There is not a way to turn off Disqus for a post.

So, I disabled it. And the comments from my last few posts went away too!

By this time, I was starting to realize this was not going to be a fast, easy project like I was hoping for.

Well, if my comments are on the Disqus site, I just need to import them, right? Right?!? crickets chirping

Of course not. This is a Friday that thinks it’s a Monday, so nothing could be that easy.

Disqus lets me export information in 2 formats: xml and rss.

Okay, good. Now to see which one WP needs to import the comments… … … …  What the heck is WXR?!?

Time to use Google…Disqus to WP points to…a discussion on Disqus where people have been asking for 3 months for an import feature. It’s promised for the END of this month!

Okay, calm down, TG, you just need a XML to WXR converter. Quick Google search and everything will be all better.

It’s not good when you go to the top results only to see Question Unanswered.

Time for another look at import options. Hmm, RSS (import posts from an RSS feed). Yay, this will work! I haz RSS feed! Wait, wait, that’s not what I want. Stop! (notices the small word POSTS not comments). Each comment turned into an individual post. Arrrrrgh!!!

So, there you have it. Why I am no longer using Disqus, and likely won’t be using them again for a while (at least until they actually have a WP converter).