It’s time to rethink blog comments
- Blog comments are dying
- Tweets and Twitter accounts are more frequently cited in blogs posts now
- Yet no notifications are provided to the person or tweet being cited (when not on Twitter)
- Why can’t tweets cited off Twitter act like pingbacks do for links and blogs?
The what:
- Scanned-through 182 blog posts last night
- Usual ‘X got funding $Y’ and ‘A launched B’ stuff
- One post stood out as significant:
- Re/code is now stopping comments on its site
- Re/code is a major publisher of digital news, founded only this year by the legendary Kara Swisher:
- They have re-launched their site and are now removing the ability to leave comments
- Repeat: one of the most respected digital (and social) news sites is removing the ability to perform an inherently social act
Why?
- People are leaving fewer and fewer comments on blogs
- General engagement around the news is happening on Twitter
- The journalists themselves are interacting with readers on Twitter about their article
- Ask yourself, when was the last time YOU left a comment on a blog - exactly!
Blogging is valuable though:
- It powers the real-time conversation on Twitter
- Habitually, bloggers now link to the Tweets or Twitter accounts of references
- But the connections die because there’s no notifications
- Yet engagement happens outside of the blog
- So if blogs feed tweets
- And tweets feed conversation
- Why can’t tweets act like pingbacks in links?
- So both the bloggers and the people who inspire/perpetuate the valuable discussion be ‘rewarded’?
UPDATE:
- Doesn’t solve the whole problem (i.e. the one about attributuion or notification of citation on Twitter(
- ‘Twitter Mentions as Comments‘ plugin does what it says on the tin
- See the organised thread of comments below
It’s time to rethink blog comments: Blog comments are dying
Tweets and Twitter accounts are more frequently ci… http://t.co/ZwOIHh1g0L
RT @paulfabretti: It’s time to rethink blog comments: Blog comments are dying
Tweets and Twitter accounts are more frequently ci… http://…
This >> RT @paulfabretti: It’s time to rethink blog comments: Blog comments are dying http://t.co/bJsJwDknpl via @allthingsic
Interesting thoughts on the relationship between blogs and twitter (via @paulfabretti): http://t.co/VUCHhmg7ad
MT @paulfabretti: Time to rethink blog comments: Tweets are more frequently fuelling conversation http://t.co/3GzZeP6P4F <- totally agree
RT @paulfabretti: It’s time to rethink blog comments: Blog comments are dying
Tweets and Twitter accounts are more frequently ci… http://…
Indeed, the death of comments is making blogging far less useful. People can’t really have a sensible conversation about it as although you get lots of reaction it’s spread over Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. What I have found interesting is when I cross post my blog content and publish it on LinkedIn it gets a lot more comments, just like the old days of blogs.
The Twitter plug-in doesn’t entirely solve the problem as you need something that aggregates the response across every platform.
Indeed Stuart, and Robert Scoble has made some interesting observations about how interactions on his Facebook profile are much higher than they ever were on his other channels.
Rethinking blog comments http://t.co/SrwYNn7wcu < If you’re a regular blog reader or writer, this suggests a major shift is now happening
RT @vikkichowney: MT @paulfabretti: Time to rethink blog comments: Tweets are more frequently fuelling conversation http://t.co/3GzZeP6P4F …