Note that Livefyre was removed two months later. More here.
Reviewing blog analytics since July 25 when Livefyre was installed here, you will notice a steady count of visitors.
Your fine eye may notice a slight decline in readers which is likely due to a mere 12 articles published here over the past month. Weekly visitor metrics from every Monday elaborate:
June 20: 408
June 27: 516
July 4: 338
July 11: 430
July 18: 429
July 25: 400
August 1: 364
August 8: 399
August 15: 444
If visitors remained near-constant, what of comments? Disregarding the initial article that introduced the comment system, the subsequent 11 articles saw an average 8 comments.
It is notable that frequent commentators prior to July 25 are no longer here — but that may also be due to my commenting on their blogs less. It’s hard to know for sure.
Questions develop every week about the commenting interface and kudos to support whiz Jenna Langer for her quick responses. As for you, thank you for continuing to read and share.
Related articles you may enjoy:
{ 43 comments… read them below or add one }
Thanks for sharing these stats Ari. I’m interested to see how this looks a few weeks from now. When we enable guest commenting will you be turning that on, or do you think creating an account is cutting down on the trolls? And of course I’m happy to help as always
@jennalanger Can you elaborate what you refer by guest commenting? What option will someone have they don’t have today? I’m already seeing a lot of incoming spam — both the kind automatically trapped when people include off-topic links at the end of their comments and the kind that looks normal until it is obvious the email address gives it away.
From within Google+ I am seeing links to blog posts. When I read the posts, there are few comments, but a lively discussion is going at G+. Those blogs are mostly found via G+ and I haven’t checked if it has changed for them.
@Ari Herzog The guest commenting option will let someone comment by putting name and email address, no account or password required. You don’t have to turn it on, as sometimes passwords don’t even keep out the trolls
Hi Ari
” the subsequent 11 articles saw an average 8 comments”
That sounds pretty low for you.
Are you disappointed?
Obviously people are reluctant to sign up.
I was OK I was already signed up.
Still not sure about Livefyre.
Very interesting stats. I am new to your site, but I’ve been researching livefyre for my own blog and wondering what people’s thoughts were. That’s how I found this. What were your stats prior to June 20?
Wow, livefyre may be scaring people off. I haven’t used it, but I think it is simple enough and if you log in once, you don’t really have to think about it again. I’m kind of liking it.
The Google has launched the new algorithm for the ranking and keyword. You are getting the excellent traffic or the user. What type of strategies are u using?
@Diana of Elephant’s Eye Google Plus? Huh?
@easyP I’ve rarely cared about comment counts. The fact people read is more important. For every commentator there are 90% more lurkers — and I say to them, keep lurking!
@Adam Shamus It grew on me over time, not the least because @DannyBrown kept promoting it everywhere.
@Kevin @ email management The past is generally the same as the present. There are always valleys and mountains. If you need advice if @livefyre is right for you, maybe @Shonali can help.
August 24, 2011 at 1:18 AM
It has increased interaction on my blog.
hey ari I am also a new visitor but the stats are amazing, keep up the good work will book mark your site
August 24, 2011 at 12:36 PM
@Ari Herzog I’d be happy to give @Kevin @ email management any help I can, though @jennalanger and team are so great at helping out.
Btw, Ari (and Jenna) – I didn’t get this notification when you tagged me. Jenna, isn’t that supposed to happen? Or is it that the first time you have to tag someone via Twitter or Facebook, and after that you can use their Livefyre tag?
@Shonali Confirm your settings at http://www.livefyre.com/profile/edit/notifications/ are how you want them to be. That might be what @jennalanger asks first.
@Ari Herzog@Shonali Ari’s got it right, have you checked your settings? I received the email for this reply, so it should be working correctly. Feel free to let us know if you still aren’t getting them after checking those settings.
@TheJackB How so? Bringing in new names and faces?
August 25, 2011 at 2:14 AM
@Ari Herzog New readers and an increase in comments.
August 25, 2011 at 7:58 AM
@jennalanger Well, I’ve been getting them for other blogs, but I will check again. Thank you, Jenna! @Ari Herzog
Do you have a count of commenters? Has the number of commenters gone up or down significantly over time? Have there been posts that bump up or down the number of commenters?
Here is an example for you. One comment on the blog post, and 83 over at G+
http://blog.louisgray.com/2011/08/real-valley-stories-should-working.html
https://plus.google.com/100535338638690515335/posts/5kwaHe6uyC8
General note that I am disliking the fact that socialsync comments are being added to my wordpress database — to the extent that if/when I remove the livefyre comment plugin, there will be a lot of nonsensical comments leftover.
I am also a little concerned about the decrease in commentators — but maybe this is normal when people encounter a new commenting interface. I wonder if switching to a pure Facebook-only commenting plugin might increase the commenting, even if it limits commenting to Facebook users.
Thoughts, anyone? I think @Shonali @DannyBrown @ginidietrich and/or @jennalanger could be insightful here.
October 10, 2011 at 4:30 AM
@Ari Herzog@Shonali@DannyBrown@ginidietrich@jennalanger
I clicked reply and got all that (above). Thought I’d leave it there so you would know.
Any blog that requires commenters to log in will get less comments and any blog that was once CommentLuv enabled that removes CommentLuv is likely to lose almost all of the bloggers who use CommentLuv as commenters. There are multiple reasons for this:
1) I for one miss it so much I rarely comment in a blog that doesn’t use it. With CommentLuv I instantly know someone about the readers and what they care about even if I’ve never been to that blog before and without it they’re mostly all just strangers.
2) We don’t like logging in and it doesn’t always work. Unless I have something I REALLY want to say if I don’t remember my password right off or logging in doesn’t work I just leave.
<continued>
October 10, 2011 at 4:31 AM
@Ari Herzog@Shonali@DannyBrown@ginidietrichTo Clarify – I don’t know why I’m getting so many flagged in this reply and I only got html – not the little boxes – in the previous comment.
3) Where we don’t comment we usually don’t read or share, either.
4) If you use any third party commenting system where are YOUR comments? Comments left in your blog are YOURS – Unless you give them away. They could be deleted or censored and how would you know?
5) I have a serious concern about the ease with which Livefyre and other third party commenting systems can be used for censorship. Why do all the Livefyre links in my comments work EXCEPT the one in a post that portrays the Occupy Wall Street movement positively? Having notified Livefyre they said the link was broken. More than four hours later it is STILL broken. If it were just any link that would be one thing. That it is the only Livefyre link in a post supportive of #ows is simply suspicious. For details on that see my latest post titled Blogging Ethics: Time to Choose.
6) That points up the last reason bloggers don’t care for third party commenting systems. That post is pertinent to this comment, but I have no idea whether you would welcome the link or don’t want links. How would I know? That is another big reason for commenting in CommentLuv blogs exclusively when I can make some rare time to comment.
7) Livefyre has a length limit. I’m not sure what it is but I’m always hitting it.
@GrowMap Perhaps community manager @jennalanger is best suited to reply to your 7 bullets.
@Ari Herzog@GrowMap Hi Gail, I want to assure you that we are not trying to censor anyone or your point of view. We will be fixing the links very shortly, and unfortunately it isn’t as simple as making a quick change, and I have an engineer working on it right now. It doesn’t have anything to do with that specific article, it’s an error that occurred when TPM installed Livefyre on the Idea Lab portion of the site. I will let you know as soon as it is fixed so you can continue to share your comments on the posts.
October 11, 2011 at 9:48 AM
@GrowMap@Ari Herzog@Shonali@ginidietrich Have to disagree (and I think Gini will too, for the same reason).
I think the number of comments a blog receives is down to the blogger, not any comments system. If you have a great community, they won’t care if there’s any kind of registration (I even had a few commenters sign up just to leave comments in the early days of Livefyre, before the multiple sign-in options it has now).
There are many bloggers that feel CommentLuv adds to the spam problem (for the record, I’m not one of them). And I haven’t seen a huge number of commenters disappear because I switched from native WordPress with CommentLuv to Livefyre with LinkBack.
Livefyre also pulls the comments directly from your WordPress comments area, so you are ALWAYS in control of where your comments are. To be honest, though, it’s a fallacy that we’re in control of anything on our blogs – our web hosts are. If they fall, our blog, comments, etc, fall too – this isn’t a third-party comments issue, it’s a blog one.
October 11, 2011 at 9:59 AM
@DannyBrown <<What he said. @GrowMap @Ari Herzog @ginidietrich
October 11, 2011 at 2:08 PM
@jennalanger@Ari Herzog@DannyBrown Hi Ari, I am never going to use Livefyre and I’m sure it works as designed so there is no reason for Jennalanger to reply.
IMHO, handing control over your comments to any third party commenting system that can break the links you’ve share at will or delete comments that were written by commenters and you on your own blog is so unwise as to not even warrant consideration.
Obviously, each blogger will decide what they want to use for themselves. I have predicted for a long time that there will be separate blogging communities. They already exist and the divide will become more and more pronounced over time.
I disagree with Danny Brown because there are so many blogs that no one can read them all. Each of us has only so many hours in the day to read and comment in blogs so we are going to focus on the blogs we prefer – and most people prefer to not have to sign in.
Bloggers who use CommentLuv read and comment almost exclusively in other CommentLuv blogs and since Livefyre notifies you of replies when you’re in a Livefyre blog I would think that those who comment in Livefyre blogs will primarily visit those.
@GrowMap Ironic for you to write you will never use Livefyre — yet here you are. As @DannyBrown noted above, the blogger is always in charge of comments left; if I choose to uninstall Livefyre and shift to Disqus or the vanilla Wordpress system, all comments stay in the WP database.
I understand your passion for CommentLuv, for I used to be a fan (and still am) of the plugin, but it’s a plugin and once you remove the plugin, those links are gone. If anything, you have more control with Livefyre than with CommentLuv. I continue to register this blog on the ComLuv database, and continue to see such backlinks when I comment on such blogs.
And whether or not there’s a reason for @jennalanger to respond is up to her, but as the community manager for Livefyre, it’s always nice to keep her apprised of negative feedback to turn it positive.
Will Livefyre stay here forever? I don’t know. But it’s here now.
October 12, 2011 at 1:07 AM
@Ari Herzog@DannyBrown@jennalanger
I meant I will never use it on any blogs I manage – not that I never comment on other blogs that use it. I very rarely comment in blogs with Livefyre and only got involved with them now because the sharing links to a very important post were broken.
Interesting that Livefyre has copied CommentLuv and adds the last post for SOME people. Since only some people who comment have links and I don’t I reread the post on the Livefyre blog. There is nothing in the blog post announcing that new feature indicating that the commenter is supposed to do something to activate that – only what the Livefyre using blog needs to do. (I found out about that here: http://blog.livefyre.com/linkback-autolink-your-latest-post-from-comment/ )
I’m guessing that only bloggers who have Livefyre installed get a link, but in CommentLuv anyone can get links. Yet another reason there will be distinctly separate communities where, as usual, the CommentLuv blogs are generous to others while the Livefyre blogs grant links only to their own.
@GrowMap My understanding from @jennalanger is CommentLuv or something like that is in the works for a future release… but, yes, the “my latest conversation” backlink is reserved for Livefyre users and their last blog articles, e.g. what shows up below which would also show up on a comment I write on @Shonali’s blog, for instance.
October 12, 2011 at 3:08 PM
@GrowMap@Ari Herzog@jennalanger The LinkBack option was installed based on community feedback. It’s just one of many things that Livefyre is doing to make its users happy and involved.
As Ari mentions, you have a passion for CommentLuv – understandably so, it’s a great plugin. But it’s just *one* plugin of many, where bloggers make the choice as to which one they use.
I’d say Livefyre are just as generous as CommentLuv, since they listen to their users as much as Andy from CommentLuv does (I’ve had some great conversations with him on features, etc).
The interesting thing about your point on separate commenting communities could – *could* – be leveraged at the disparity between CommentLuv and CommentLuv Premium. That may be an interesting statistic to look at in the coming months.
Additionally, bloggers using CommentLuv decide jow many link options are shown; if it’s do-follow or not; if people need to sign up to that site to use CommentLuv; and more.
So, again, it’s the blogger that makes that decision, not the plugin. Which would suggest your point about disparate commenting communities will be dictated by the blogger and not the company behind whatever plugin you like, or don’t.
October 13, 2011 at 6:39 PM
@Ari Herzog@jennalanger@Shonali Thank you for confirming that Livefyre only shows links from other Livefyre blogs.
@GrowMap I personally know you tweet. I don’t know about the other login options but you do have a Twitter account. So when you write you don’t want to log in, does that include logging in via Twitter?
October 11, 2011 at 2:12 PM
@Ari Herzog I have serious concerns about the change in the wording of Twitter authorizations and since I don’t trust Livefyre I don’t really want to give them that kind of access to my Twitter accounts.
See http://www.growmap.com/twitter-authorizations/ for details.
@Ari Herzog We’re working to address the SocialSync database question as people have different opinions on it – many bloggers love the fact that they get to keep the the social comments on their site. I think adding an option is the best bet, and we’re working it into our roadmap.
Personally, I tend to stay away from commenting using Facebook. That world is for my friends and to see what’s happening with their lives – it’s not where I talk about the topics I like online. I much more likely to sign in with Twitter.
@jennalanger But what you do on FB is not what others do, so how does what you personally think matter?
@Ari Herzog I actually think other people use it the same way I do – when I look through my news feed it isn’t my friends commenting on articles or sharing news, it’s pictures of weddings, weekends, and families. How do you use Facebook?
@jennalanger I’m the same as you — but I also look at sites like Mashable and Techcrunch which include even less commenting options than Livefyre by near-insisting on Facebook or Twitter commenting.
Which begs the question why you’re supporting a technology when you don’t use it.
October 11, 2011 at 10:23 AM
@Ari Herzog@jennalanger Well I think just because one person doesn’t use it that way doesn’t mean the same for others, Ari. Livefyre is for bloggers, not what people do on Facebook. I have had some conversations come in from Facebook, which is cool, so it’s clearly a nice option to have.
Well, here I join @Ari Herzog …No decrease in number of comments now
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