Anil Dash is insightful about the differences between the old web and the new web.
Scroll below his post to add a comment — and be forced to comment through Facebook. Whether or not you choose to share that comment on your Facebook wall is up to you, but it’s either comment with Facebook or don’t comment at all.
Across the blogosphere, Danny Brown wrote in September why he installed Lifefyre as a commenting system — and he wrote a month later why Disqus was installed to replace Livefyre.
Danny’s reason? His readers preferred Disqus.
I’ve asked you before which commenting system you prefer best.
This time, I want to ask a different question. To the non-Facebook users who read my blog, is the commenting system so important to you? If you don’t comment on blogs, it shouldn’t matter what sort of system exists. If you do comment, how do you react to a Facebook system?
About Ari Herzog
While the commenting system per se isn’t important, if your goal is to have an active community engaging with each other, and not just the blog author, then the preferred platform for that community has to be taken into account. The results from my outreach proved that – I had Livefyre installed, but the majority of people preferred Disqus – once I activated that, people that hadn’t commented on the blog for a while re-appeared, and newcomers also felt it less intimidating.
So, important to the blogger as an individual, no – important to the blogger as a way of looking after his or her audience, yes.
Is every action of yours a direct result of what someone wants you to do, Danny? Do you never exercise your own judgment?
Of course I do – but when the goal of my blog has always been to foster conversation, I’ll go with the preferred choices of the community for that.
Cheers!
i only comment on blogs with disqus these days. Sorry.
…and yet you commented here. Why?
Good topic Ari,
If a blog requires you to log on to comment then it really isn’t a blog then is it?
It’s really like a membership site in disguise. Except it’s a poorly designed one like the glasses with the mustache. lol
I was very surprised when i first saw that some bloggers allow commenting only with facebook. I do not have a personal Facebook account and yes, if commenting is possible only through facebook, it will stop me from commenting. Well I can use my wifes account, but thats only if i think my comment is really rally important.
Well, It’s not like that I hate facebook comments, or I don’t have an Facebook account, but it’s the time factor that comes here.
Reading blog posts can be time consuming and thanks to email subs and rss subs that I don’t have to visit each blog I like to see if there is anything new to read.
Since I mostly read blogs through email or rss nowadays, I have no quick option to comment. If the post looks worth commenting, I goto the site for commenting. But if then I have to login to facebook and link the account, or other hassles, I simply leave the website if the comment is not that important.
In the classic WordPress comments system, I just have to double click on name,email,www fields and my browser saves my time of typing those.
If i comment by facebook, then the same comment is displayed in my profile in FB as well. Believe me, If I get a reply to my comment in the original blog post, that’s a real reply. But in facebook, I’ll get some comments to my action which I don’t like as they turn out to be useless timepassing by my FB friends.
You have fields pre-filled in with WordPress so you double-click. Saves you time. Got it.
What about Disqus/Livefyre systems? Got a preference comparing those with WP?
I personally think Disqus is a winner. I used to be a big CommentLuv fan and I still am, but for certain blogs (in certain niches), I think Disqus takes the cake (the sports niche is an example) mostly because it updates in realtime, its upvote/downvote feature and its slick interface! For blogs such as your, I’d definitely stick with CommentLuv.
Just my 2 cents.
What’s special about my blog that it wouldn’t warrant Disqus?
It’s the digital age and information travels from one side of the planet to the next in seconds. Everyone has a FB account and for commenting they prefer disqus and I do not find anything wrong in it. If we do not update with time then time will leave us behind.
I like being “against: so I’m not a big fan of Facebook being everywhere on the web. There are certain comments systems that seem much better than FB (I don’t know whether I should give some examples here).
The most important thing for me yet is having most of my comments in one place and see others’ comments there as well. Thus a centralised system is a good idea, yet not necessarily FB-provided
Making people log into Facebook to comment leaves a lot of people out. Whatever you are using here works best.
When I give comment to blog using Facebook comment, it’s not really give a comment to a blog. Comment with FB comment is comment to Facebook wall not to a blog
in my country, the famous comment system include comment luv..it really works to attract antention of readers to read our blog
(sorry, my English not so good..)
Yes facebook may make it more “exciting” to comment and thanks to new fb privacy, you can control what people can see on your wall.
I prefer to comment on blogs using the vanilla WordPress commenting system. It is the best. Why? Which other commenting systems are open source?
WordPress vanilla lets you comment your way. With no other commenting system do you get all of these:
You know I love WordPress standard commenting system, and I haven’t changed.
I recall this discussion with you before. With respect to CommentLuv, history has shown it sometimes causes more spam comments than without.
And, I fixed your unordered list.
Thanks for fixing it Ari!
I have to agree that CommentLuv can sometimes do more harm than good
Happy New Year
- Disqus allows HTML scripting; Livefyre has a Rich Text Editor for the same reason.
- IntenseDebate works with CommentLuv.
- Anyone can use Disqus, Livefyre or IntenseDebate, it’s the blogger who activates extra steps.
- Livefyre allows CSS coding to fit a design, Disqus adopts from the theme and allows certain customization re. fonts.
Fair point Danny, but they aren’t as customisable (you can’t edit the code), and you are relying on a third party to provide your comments, which means less reliable comments and slower loading pages…
Both Disqus and Livefyre loop straight into the WP comments system (Livefyre was always this way, Disqus made big improvements in that area) so they’re just as reliable. unless you’re meaning if the service itself goes down for whatever reason, then agreed.
Mind you, WordPress is just as bad. I’ve seen issues happen where Gravatar has had issues and wouldn’t load the native commenting either – so, pros and cons in all areas.
The main thing is, the blogger uses the system that’s right for their blog and community – after all, that’s what makes it what it is.
I’m trying to figure out now as well which would be the best system. Currently playing around with Commentluv and hopefully it would create some activity on the blog posts.
I was very surprised when i first saw that some bloggers allow commenting only with Facebook.
I do have a facebook account however I never use it comment on blogs or to connect to anything really, (spotify etc). Every time I see a “log in with facebook” button the first thing I do is to look for the link where I can enter my email address or register an account. There’s too little privacy with facebook for me to just use it with anything. Everyone can see what I do in real time and I’m not confortable with this idea. I sometimes wonder why I still have a a facebook account actually! Thanks for the post
Came back to link to your post on blog archiving. I’ll happily use the WP comment system, it’s quick and easy! But I won’t log in elsewhere to comment (Disqus hates me, I’ve given up on it), and I absolutely won’t use FB to comment.
Understood. Should I extrapolate that you have limited accounts on the internet that require a username?
I need a good reason to make time to log in e.g. StatCounter once a day. Blogs I can read, without commenting.
I would not comment using a Facebook commenting system.
I am way less likely to comment for sites using wordpress/gravator mashup as when wordpress tried to swallow gravatar they messed it up so that I have to jump through hoops.
I understand the annoyance of spam and the desire to use systems that kill spam (gravatar was fine before wordpress messed it up).
Help me out with something there, John? You’re less likely to comment on a WordPress system than a Facebook system?
No, I have essentially a 0% chance of commenting on a Facebook system. I don’t use fb at all.
WordPress systems I sometimes bother to fight through the gravatar integration brokeness (but most often now – after nearly a year of frustration – I just skip it). They seem to assume you only have 1 user account, which isn’t true for me. And I think they failed to properly cope with the same email on gravatar and wordpress accounts when they decided to jam things together. There support disappeared after I saying they would look into it.
For a while I had Facebook commenting on one of my websites. Actually I had wordpress comments and facebook comments side by side. Then I decided to Scrap the Facebook comments and just use WordPress comments. I haven’t bothered with livefyre or disqus.
Antonio