I was just going through some of my old CD folders and came across a CD I bought in Harajuku a few years ago (Drummania / ドラムマニア）. I just looked at their updated website and blog, and found a very interesting feature.
At the end of each post is a small clap button. Click it, and it registers as a clap. For each person who claps for a blog entry, the clap count rises, just like a comment count would by adding comments.
This is handy for people who perhaps are strapped for time and can’t comment but want to let the poster know they appreciate and applause their entry/post. The next step would be to get this functionality working cross-blogs, where popularity is not only measured by page views and comments, but by the amount of applause received.
At the time of posting, I couldn’t find such a feature available for WordPress. Surely such a feature would be easy to code (simpler than the commenting system)?