New Facebook Comments to Take on the Long Tail (and yes, Posterous should have it as well!)
Facebook introduced their new external comments plugin. So what – you ask? Well, quite frankly – it’s a revolution!
It’s competing with IntenseDebate, Disqus and Echo. But it has the advantage none of the competitors have – the Facebook community. Whenever you comment, it goes to your Facebook stream. Whenever your friend answers, it… goes back to your site! It’s totally easy to participate – if you’re logged into Facebook
Bad news for the giants…
With no comment karma or other means of emphasizing the important content, the new Facebook comments plugin is going to totally kill commenting on popular websites like TechCrunch (which, amazingly, is testing it right now. The first post got >1000 comments. With such amounts it’s just a lot of noise. If you are big, do it like they do it on Slashdot or don’t do it at all!
…but fantastic news for small blogs!
On the other hand, it can be a real killer feature for small sites that normally would have zero or very few comments, with all interactions moving to Facebooks and Twitters or the world. Now with Facebook Comments, it can stay on Facebook and you don’t care as you’re still getting your comments back on your blog and the more people share it and comment on it, the bigger chance you get to attract new readers. Amazing opportunity!
This is why I predict Facebook Comments won’t touch the ID/Echo/Disqus market share on dominant websites and popular blogs, but it will totally take over the long tail
So, am I going to use it?
I’d love to use it on this Posterous blog. I can imainge it getting many many more comments if Facebook Comments was applied here. I’m really hoping Posterous does that. Otherwise I might just switch to Thumblr or some other blogging site that does that first.
And what about…
, you ask? It’s a more complex issue. Our goal is not exactly as many comments as possible but rather as many users as possible who rate films and get recommendations, and come back for more and eventually engage in commenting. Facebook Comments generates a lot of buzz around your posts and gets you new readers but may not be the best choice for a social network. But I’ll be certainly looking into ways of using it there in some way as well.
, you ask? It’s a more complex issue. Our goal is not exactly as many comments as possible but rather as many users as possible who rate films and get recommendations, and come back for more and eventually engage in commenting. Facebook Comments generates a lot of buzz around your posts and gets you new readers but may not be the best choice for a social network. But I’ll be certainly looking into ways of using it there in some way as well.You can read more about Facebook Comments plugin here: http://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/plugins/comments/
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