Outside the Echo Chamber: Comments, Alive and Well

This past Friday, the folks from fellow comment system provider, JS-Kit, announced dramatically that “[blog] comments are dead.”

It’s a catchy platitude and one that surely was not meant to be taken literally. Most did see it as a fun sound bite and a good way to introduce a couple new features. A few others, however, read a bit more into it and asked what Disqus thought about the death of comments and its replacement, the social stream.

We think about comments quite often at Disqus, as you can imagine. Over the weekend, I answered a number of similar questions so I thought I could address this a little better on this blog.

Comments are not dead. Encouraging a real community on your site to have real conversations has always been important. It’s still important today and is only becoming increasingly more relevant. It’s very true that people have choices on where to react to a topic; they can tweet about it, discuss it on Reddit, or share it on FriendFeed. Conversations are happening outside of sites and it’s important to bring that value back to the source content.

That’s why we introduced Reactions, a built-in feature of Disqus that aggregates comments and mentions of your blog post or article and displays them with the comments. We released this about 4 months ago with our friends at uberVU, and are now also working with our friends at BackType, to bring reactions to all publishers using Disqus. Since then, millions of reactions have been aggregated for the discussion communities powered by Disqus. There are a dozen services that we support, including the popular Twitter, FriendFeed, and Digg.

I truly believe in social reactions to augment comments. But how about making it a single social stream in place of conventional comments? Why not throw all comments and reactions into a single timeline? Personally, I believe it’s too noisy. The idea behind a single social stream seems to be for amassing volume of mentions, similar to trackbacks. They’re not very useful. It’s for ego, rather than fostering a coherent discussion. The conversation is continually broken up and the context is lost.

What do you think? I’d like to hear what you think about the future of comments. Disqus is an always-evolving system that should work the way you want it to. If you’d like to check out JS-Kit’s new system that I’ve been referring to, you can see it at http://js-kit.com.

– Daniel

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Daniel on July 13th 2009 in disqus

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  • DISQUS has served me a lot of time online and I'm considering using it on all my blogs too. Thanks for this informative post.
  • "That’s why we introduced Reactions, a built-in feature of Disqus that aggregates comments and mentions of your blog post or article and displays them with the comments. We released this about 4 months ago with our friends at uberVU, and are now also working with our friends at BackType, to bring reactions to all publishers using Disqus."

    I haven't come across anyone else (that I know personally) using BackType.com along with Disqus. I'm using it for the reasons mention by Michel: choice of re-publishing. And they (BackType) make it dead-simple with links to Reply, Original, Permalink, Tweet -- right under the comment. Simple! The only thing I don't like about BackType is it is a bit slow to grab all the comments from various places around the web and drop them into your profile -- especially comments on blogs that incorporate Disqus. This is a bit disconcerting, given Disqus' comment above "...and are now also working with our friends at BackType, to bring reactions to all publishers using Disqus."

    I, too, would like to see intuitive integration, that is, both with BackType and within the Disqus control panel.
  • What's odd for me is that UberVU never seems to return any reactions on my blog pages, yet quite a few seem to come from backtype. So, Disqus is already, in someway or another, integrating with backtype.

    What's annoying is that my own tweet of the blog posting and my own tweets of comment replies as well as other's tweets of comment replies are showing up in the reactions list, which is, ultimately, a waste of space and very confusing. Disqus/backtype should be able to filter these out.
  • Thanks for posting this. Nice info
  • nice post and blog .... Thanks
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    Right on message (the medium as message?). The pragmatic function of instant connectivity requires a follow through, in cumulative momentum, as in "revolutionary change". Requires "thinking", and attendant effects/affects. Requires vocabulary, where smiles are for birds (implicit pun here, intended). Do I really need a picture? Well, I guess the Talking Heads did have publicity.
  • I like commenting feature if u called it reaction then also its perfect after all people giving you some kind of reaction in form of different ways like leave a text comment, leave a video comments via seesmic or it would be anyways..and now a days there are too many things like twitter, facebook, friendfeed so people spreading the comments or reaction according to their comfort level..and we do need a single tool too see or monitoring it..

    and people can comment or react on anything..it could be a nice photo, a nice video, a nice blogpost, a nice audio, a nice website, a nice thought in short it can be anything so JS-Kit, announced “[blog] comments are dead.” I think that never gonna be never gonna dead. Only the way of giving comments is changed..

    so Is email dead? mean whatever social networking tool or site you're using after all all things managed by just an email, from opening an account to getting alerts and the list is too long so like this comments never going to dead.

    Now a days commenting having a added values. People do use all form of style to do commenting like text, audio, video and now a days also using ratings and "Like" feature similar to facebook. these all ways to give reaction to something.

    i think Disqus should add "on the fly commenting" mean to say if i like a image or if i like a video or if i like a web page or a blogpost or a document, anything i like I just need to post my reaction whether they using Disqus or not..and it would be great if I can do comments in a particular part of a webpage..If I like a part of some image then i should able to post the comment for particular that part so other can know that i like that thing too much..

    when we need to see that how many comments we got on particular page then we should get it via a bookmarklet that show the page reaction and comments or a widget on website where i can click and expend it and able to see all the reaction whether its from twitter, disqus, facebook or friendfeed or IM service or email.

  • I very much agree with your way of thinking. I implemented Disqus on my site, and I personally believe that the public be re uncomfortable seeing other threads of conversation, and they do not answer do the same. Discussions are different.

    It's the same with a plugin to import Menéame comments (in a Spanish Digg) to WP, the talks are separate from another so that the noise which would be catastrophic wardrobe.
  • Social media reactions are an interesting idea, and I was excited about them at first, but in practice they are not very useful.

    Twitter comments are almost always "RT @wolfire new blog post (insert title here) (insert bitly link here)". At best, there is like a 10 word summary that adds zero value to the discussion.

    Reddit comments tend to be dominated by long pun threads or questions along the lines of "Why do we care about this game?" and then lengthy arguments about why we do or do not suck.

    YouTube comments are just... soul crushing. They really should just never be read by anybody.

    In other words, these reactions have virtually no pertinent value because they are taken in a completely different context. They just make your real, legitimate comments more difficult to read.

    My suggestion would be to treat various social media sites like "smart" trackbacks, where you see that it has been submitted to Digg or Reddit and then can upvote it / digg it from there, and expand it and read the comments inline if you wish.

    It would be even cooler if there was a call to action to submit to Twitter, Facebook, etc. which would be like an amazing version of ShareThis.
  • It all comes down to quality.

    You can have just as much crap from the so-called social sites. I get hit with all kinds of email from another site that can only be called spam, but because it's a "social" site it's different? You can have a helpful dialog commenting on blogs just as much as on social sites.

    One time I was reading product reviews on newegg.com. Somebody asked a question because he was having difficulty setting up a microphone on his PC. Another customer posted a response with very detailed instructions that couldn't be found on the manufacturer's site.

    Now that's quality and it wasn't on a social site. It was basically two people "commenting" on a blog-type section of the site.

    Commenting isn't dead. It's just becoming a part of an ever growing network.

    Take care,
    JC
  • One of the things I like about BackType.com is that it gives you the choice to either publish reactions (actual tweets, etc), or just a summary. People can then trace back to the reaction on their respective platforms (or in the community platform, such as BackType.com or, in this case, Disqus.com) to add more to the conversation elsewhere.

    Generally, I would like to have that ability. That is, by having a summary of reactions instead of listing all of them (or to have the choice to choose between both), such as:

    "Reactions"

    "(26) On Twitter | (5) On Facebook | (3) On FriendFeed"

    Etc. It would give people an indication that there is buzz occurring elsewhere (goes for social proof and induces deeper conversation, and not just for egotistical purposes), and people can do a search to find those reactions if they choose to know more about what's being said.

    Plus, it also feeds the egotistical nature if one so chooses. You simply have a total number of comments/reactions/tracbacks on other platforms, without having to list them all.

    Also, it would be nice to have middle-ground. For example, a summary count, and possibly including the text of the first/original tweet/reaction. (Especially if a reaction is merely a "retweet" of the original.)

    That way, you give a taste of the reaction, but without listing a litany of reactions that makes everything noisy.

    My 3 cents.
  • I like that idea Michel!
  • I like this idea very much.

    I would like to add, an option wherein we can choose or filter out which "reactions" will show as part of the "comments" flow. For example, most Friendfeed "reactions" are discussions and are better off as part of the "comments" flow.

    Trackbacks can also be considered as worth being part of the "comments" flow than being at the very bottom (if I'm not mistaken it is after the "reactions" section - which makes trackbacks much more useless :p )

    Third, the current "reactions" implementation are mostly just "re-" this and re-that - ie. re-tweet; re-post; and so on. Most of these are not really "reactions" per se, looking at Mashable being the most updated "reactions"-enabled website, it looks like spam and only adds to the load time of the site and of Disqus.

    These "re-" stuff should be collapsed down as suggested above "(26) Twitter | (5) Facebook" and so on.

    Fourth, a change of terminologies used. "Reactions" is no different from "Comments". Second argument, the current content of "reactions" are well, as I mentioned earlier, "re-this" and "re-that", or the "Re-" Spams. These are not "reactions" at all ;)

    And well, again the trackbacks are much better to be placed on top or as part of the "Comments" section/flow.

    ^_^

    Those are my suggestions :D

  • i think both are having good idead..just imaging blog like mashable having too many twitter and other reaction under the comment system..now from that what things other user going to get? there should be more ways for people to do comments but it should be organized in proper ways..

    like In blogs, it show the comments count same way it should show the reaction count from different services and it should be a drop down menu style so if people wanna see twitter reaction or friend feed reaction or wanna see comments that people did in Google Reader by using the Google reader's social feature etc..

    Backtype, uberVU, trailfire, instacomment cocomments or other tools like seesmic for vedio comments all things are good but need a way to place them properly..
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  • It's quite simple indeed, two examples:
    * Retweets are *usually* just noise. With exceptions
    * Friendfeed comments can add much value to conversations

    One solutions could be to GROUP identical retweets (you already sort of do that) and THREAD Friendfeed comments pulled from the same source. Of course those are just two examples, each social service has its own personality.

    Mixing Reactions and Comments is the right thing if you ask me. Just, do it properly. If you are really interested I can provide use cases and further ideas.

    Rock on ;)
  • Very tactful post, Daniel. And I agree with you - having it all mixed together makes it too noisy. Now, enabling the reactions and comments to appear "real-time", or without need for page refresh (which is what I think people mean by that) would be a very nice feature. Also, the ability to comment from my blog right into the social stream in response to any of the reactions, or the blog post itself (beyond just Twitter) would also be very useful. The more conversation and encouragement of conversation that can happen on my blog, the happier blogger I am. I want my readers to "talk amwongst themselves" as much as possible...
  • Right now I am having fragmented conversations - some on Facebook, some on my blog and some on Twitter. All participants in this lose by not being able to see what others are saying. It would be huge to bring everything back to the disqus comment thread.

    In a way what I mean is - imbed the disqus comment thread in all places and irrespective of where they are typed, they show up in every other location.
  • I prefer reactions filtered into catagories instead of a steady stream/timeline that will be difficult to follow/maintain. On the subject of fragmented comments I feel that my comments through Disqus have become fragmented due to the variety of logins I use [Facebook/Twitter/Disqus profile]. Are you any closer to integrating each profile to have one ring to rule them all :)
  • We are and I'm very excited about it.
  • Glad to hear it, Daniel. As I mentioned over here (http://disq.us/1rsg), Disqus already does a lot of what ECHO is offering, I think it just needs some fine tuning. The fact that ECHO is charging $98/yr for these features certainly gives plenty of slack in the line for Disqus to take up.

    I love Disqus. These days social media is moving fast and blogs need to keep up with these trends. I hope Disqus can help that happen by continuing to innovate "comments" into Disqussions no matter where they occur.

    AND, if you can figure out how to do this in a way that continues to drive traffic to the author's blog and give them Page Rank for all the links as well then you'll have truly monetized the service.

  • What I think is that in the long term we need to integrate all these streams into one or else we're gonna get lost in all those social networks. The way this integration must be done remains to be seen, but the course of events suggests that in the near future all the blogging experience must be reinvented, from post to comments.
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