Blog Comments Aren’t Dead, But Your Activities May Be Keeping Them Away
Jul 04 2008 
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Robert Scoble made a post a while back about blog comments being dead. Well, if you look at one of my recent posts, Identi.ca Apps & Why It Could Blow Twitter Away, I have 30 comments on it thus far on SheGeeks.net. How’d my identi.ca post go over on FriendFeed? Not very well actually. I didn’t get any like nor a single comment over on FriendFeed. I wouldn’t say my blog comments are dead at all, agree?
On the other hand, my Qik video response last night to Robert Scoble did very well over on FriendFeed. It did much better than my post about it on SheGeeks.net. This made me wonder if activity on certain services made a difference as to how people interacted with my content.
FriendFeed Activity Making A Difference?
For example, yesterday I was really active on FriendFeed and I also posted a link to my Qik video response in the comments section of Scoble’s Qik video item on FriendFeed. This may have helped in keeping the discussion on FriendFeed and not on my blog. Still, I found it to be interesting how when I’m not very active on FriendFeed, my responses come to my blog. When I am more active on FriendFeed, my responses stay on FriendFeed sometimes.
As to why Scoble’s blog comments might be dead, I think it’s because most people are aware that he’s on FriendFeed 24/7 and it seems he’s more likely to respond there than on his blog. Therefore, I’d more likely comment on FriendFeed than his blog. He promotes FriendFeed so much that I’m surprised he isn’t just blogging on the service. I think most users will have this in mind when they want to reply to Scoble. He’s on FriendFeed more than anything else these days so why not just leave the comment on FriendFeed?
Should You Be More Active On Your Blog?
You can if you have the time, but if you’ve already developed a reputation for being more active elsewhere that’s where your audience will likely respond to you the most. When I was a ton more active on Twitter I had the same response. Now, I think my audience sees me as being more active on my blog and responds more here.
On the other hand, that doesn’t mean stop being active in other places. Maybe you could make your feelings known like I have. In the end, I think that service activity can make a difference in how your audience responds to you.
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Well said. And at the end of the day there is only so much we can keep up with — no matter what service it happens to be.
I will say… Disqus has increased my participation in blog commenting. Just always being “logged in” to comment without having to go through email verification 3x is great.
As a reader, I think it's more of a compliment to the blogger when I leave my comment on their blog rather than Strands or something similar. But from the readers perspecitve, oftentimes it comes down to what is easiest for me. Ideally, a comment could be made once and pushed to the various places (to be determined by the commenter). Well said Corvida!
It's an interesting theory and it is reasonable. But over the long run I think it has more to do with the individual reader's tendencies than the blogger's behaviour.
I've tried to describe my commenting tendencies here: http://www.sheysmith.com/2008/06/13/to-comment-...
Of course, this only matters if you care where the comments are made, which I don't. :)
great ideas, i agree. personally i don't really care where the comments appear, to a degree. that being said, i love comments on the blog site above all.
i'll comment on anything i think is 'commentable' unless they blog owner makes it difficult. requiring signing in to comment is where i draw the line. last night for instance, i really wanted to comment on a conversation taking place at a political blog but they required my name, address(?) and even a phone number!
needless to say, i just clicked on through to the next blog…
as an aside, i just realized that this is the first time i clicked through a twitter to read your blog corvida… so twitter works!
I don't blame you. Any blog that requires me to basically register before commenting isn't likely to receive my comment and I usually move on too.
Staying logged into Disqus is definitely a time saver. Sometimes I go to other sites and I look at the comments box and think “Why am I not logged into Disqus?”. Really they weren't using Disqus, but I'm so used to not having to type such things in now just to leave a comment. Disqus has spoiled me.
I rarely if ever, receive blog comments. I used to think that folk werent reading my blog (perhaps they are'nt!) but my Twitter followers are increasing steadily as are my contacts on mybloglog even if my subscribers are few, so someone must read/like me somewhere..lol
It must also be said that having posted several related and rather lengthy blog posts concerning my dissertation, I am now taking a bit of a break before starting a newish topic (elearning and social media in education) which is the career direction I am hoping to follow in the autumn, so hopefully that subject will attract some new interest.
The long format could be a turn off to some when we're being reprogrammed to skim everything these days. Do you think posting shorter posts would help?
I don't think they are “dead”. Still many people have not heard of friendfeed. I still don't get enough comments even though I switched to disqus. Maybe I should finally switch to wordpress instead of blogger.
Re shorter posts- you could well be right…..but it sort of breaks the flow of the story somehow, when I wanted to tell a story in several chapters. Maybe there should have been more chapters, perhaps?
Being fairly new to the social media scene, I have the privilege of playing around and my readers are coming from all over. But i find more conversations going on in Friendfeed than on my blog. I posted “Can friendfeed kill off a blog” to and I'm glad i found ur post an answer to my qn.
http://oldskoolmark.wordpress.com/2008/07/07/ca...
I'm just now really getting my feet wet with disqus. I am really loving the way it integrates with twitter and the other web 2.0 social platforms. ;)
Different point of view from that post. Interesting to say the least.