We are excited to test this new feature on our website courtesy of SendLove.to. We would like to hear what you think of this new feature, if you like it I may add this to other sites I manage.

When you read an article on this site now, you will notice the names of famous people (be it politicians, movie stars, authors, etc) highlighted and dotted underlined in a shade of blue. When you point to that name, you will be able to vote up or vote down that person in the context of the article. After voting them up or down, you can then comment about the person directly. These comments basically form a community around that person that grows.

You will also see tabs with the famous person in them where you can vote up, vote down, and comment on the person as well at the bottom of the article. NOTE: This does not interfere with normal site commenting (Disqus). As you will see, it rides right alongside of the usual comments tab. SendLove is about opinions of famous people directly. So after you comment on a an actual article, you can comment on the person.

The usual commenting system (in our case, Disqus) is not related to this feature, it works alongside. You can comment on one while ignoring the other. Use Disqus the way you always did, the only difference is that now it’s under the “Comments” tab below.

Here’s how it works: notice how when I mention the names Barack Obama, John Boehner, Sarah Palin and Amy Siskind right here, the names turn blue? Mouse over any of the names to check out the Quick Poll feature! With the Quick Poll, you can click to vote a person up or down, explain your reason why, and send it! You’ll also notice that those names show up in a tab at the bottom of this article alongside the usual comment tab. Click on a persons tab to read more about them, see the opinions of others, or send them a “love” or a “not so much” there.

If you rate or share an opinion about a person on this website, it will not be visible on other websites that also use this feature even though you are logged in as the same user on both sites. Neither will the ratings or opinions you make on another website show on this website. In other words votes and comments about a person made on this site remains on this site and is not shared on other sites that also use the SendLove feature and vice versa.

Once a name has been detected by the system, a tab for that person will appear in every post that contains that name. Rather than having a new comment thread for that person in each post, the same commenting thread of each person is displayed across all posts, as a result you can follow the conversation about a person no matter which post you are at. Each comment will display a link to the original post where the comment was made, allowing readers to put the comment in its original context. Just to be clear, this only applies to the comment thread of the people, the usual post comments, in our case Disqus, will operate as usual, each post having its unique thread.

To participate on the SendLove network, you will need to login using your Facebook, Google or Yahoo accounts. For testing purposes, I have set it to allow guest and anonymous commenting.

There is so much more that this feature does and you will see this as individuals comment more and more about a person. I encourage you to test it and see for yourself.  As with all new functions, some tweaking may be needed to get things right so please be patient. But so far so good.

Let me know what you think in the comment section of this post. The usual comment section (Disqus) is the first tab on the left above the comments section.