The Jeff Pulver Blog: “Where Have all the Comments Gone?”

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December 20, 2007

“Where Have all the Comments Gone?”

One of the side effects of my friends becoming active in Facebook has been the loss of their voice here on my blog. And while some friends still drop by from time-to-time to catch up with what is on my mind and what I have been up to, generally speaking, a number of my friends are more apt to comment on a “Note” I post on Facebook rather than make the effort to visit my blog and comment on a blog post. And while I never expected to see every blog post receive a comment, I could usually count on seeing “bunches” of comments posted here every once in a while. But that phenomenon seems to have shifted over to Facebook in sync with the time my friends are now spending in Facebook.

So it feels if I’m looking for an engaged audience to comment about something on my mind, I am most likely better off posting a note on Facebook than making another entry in my blog. On Facebook, when I post a Note, it signals the start of a group conversation.

One thing I do find interesting is while the traffic on my blog exposes all my cumulative content to a growing worldwide audience, at any given moment, the 4200 “friends” of mine on Facebook collectively appear to be more engaged to join the conversation, and they make the effort needed to be heard more often than the random stranger who visits my blog.

Just looking at a couple of blog posts from this week, yesterday’s blog post concerning my predictions for 2008 so far received no comments, and the same content posted as a note on Facebook received 12. My post earlier this week requesting a new Invisibility feature be added on Facebook yielded 4 comments on my blog and the same content posted as a note has 34 comments and that conversation is continuing.

The issue here isn’t simply the importing of a blog post into Facebook. That solution exists and is easy to implement. Turns out I don’t want to take every blog post of mine and turn it into a Facebook Note. But what I would like to do is find a way to enable the conversation to take place across multiple social networks, and seamlessly share each of the comments as part of a threaded conversation.

And it isn’t as if the entire conversation is shifting to Facebook, but it does feel as if something has shifted. I’m wondering how many other bloggers who also have embraced Facebook are experiencing something similar. I would like to know. Please drop me a line or share your experiences in the comments below.

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Readers of my blog are invited to join me on both twitter and Facebook.

Tags: Invisible, Facebook, Social Media, Jeff Pulver

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Posted by jeff on December 20, 2007 08:07 AM | Permalink

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All my blog posts are notes on Facebook.
For me it is simple -
My blog is where the the general public can read my thoughts and comment.
On Facebook - I converse with friends. So as David Thames wrote below - as in real life, there is the town square and there is coffee shop in the mall. Both have their place.

Posted by: Moshe Maeir at December 24, 2007 04:03 AM

hmmmm

was out of it yesterday off line - but my 2 cents is months ago i put in place a script so my blog posts automatically go to twitter and to facebook in my profile as far as i can see it - i wonder if jeff your idea about comments from blogs to facebook might just add more to the cluttered mind noise overload that we all suffer from, to different degrees - and poor chris brogan is too popular a social media mogul he can't figure out which up is up somes times because he is yup too bizzzy with being a social media butterfly :-) - and jeff is even worse when it comes to juggling - if you don't get an email from jeff that day - forget about it - but i love'em both :-) - i know i know jeff i am not supposed to tell our little secrets :-)

geo

Posted by: geo at December 21, 2007 02:49 PM

My friends tell me that notes and wall posting on fb is just more convenient than email or blog comments. Google reader's been getting competitive, though. When I read blogs on it now it's easy to email a post to someone, or to share stuff with others on my IM/orkut buddy list.

The ability to comment from within it will eventually happen. In the meantime just making it convenient for people to read and share blog posts around makes commenting on them more likely.

Posted by: Kartik Agaram at December 21, 2007 07:48 AM

Hi David,

Well, some people will be in for a surprise early next year when some of us discover the way to bridge together conversations and offer ways to engage in a threaded discussion, regardless of the platform.

Posted by: Jeff Pulver at December 21, 2007 06:54 AM

I think the problem with blogs is they are slightly more effort than facebook. (No captchas or describing your identity there. Also, as Danny said, you cannot follow a blog conversation, as you never come back to see if someone has responded to your comment. On FB, like Ecademy before it, you get a nudge when someone responds to your comment.)

The problem is that Facebook is a private silo out of your control and invisible to search engines. And you can't just copy the discussion from a Note out to your blog, as some people will have a (false) expectation that "what happens on the facebook, stays on the facebook."

Posted by: David Corking at December 21, 2007 04:11 AM

Working on it...

Well, more or less, anyway. I've got a project in the works named CommYou; I expect it to be at alpha around February. (Yes, an eternity in Internet time, but such is life.) It's not quite focused on your blog-centric use case, I'm afraid, but I'm trying to get meaningful, *usable* conversation working for communities in the social network environment. Going cross-network is a smidgeon dangerous (I suspect FB's not going to be happy), but it's clearly what people want, so it's going to happen sooner or later.

If you're curious, drop me a line after the holidays; I'd be happy to chat...

Posted by: Mark Waks at December 20, 2007 06:38 PM

It gets even stranger than that for me. I'm active on Utterz, Twitter, a little bit on Seesmic, have a blog, and occasionally mess with Facebook (not at all compared to YOU, mister!). And I'm having a hell of a time trying to keep up with the conversation as it's floating out there all over the place. I'm missing very genuine interactions because I can't track them all. What a pain in the butt.

I'm still waiting for a social HUD, but it hasn't shown up in the format that works for me.

Great post, and thought-provoking.

Posted by: Chris Brogan... at December 20, 2007 05:52 PM

What I find most disturbing about this is that the conversation is moving from the public space of blogs to the private space of Facebook, like when the center of towns moved from the public square to the mall, which is private space. The public square being a shared commons, the mall being commercial institution. The rise of blogging was hailed as a wonderful step in the democratization of the media and a boon for free speech, if there really is a move to Facebook, it's prescient of things I don't think I'm going to like.

Posted by: David Tames at December 20, 2007 12:57 PM

Hmm ..all those comments appeared while I writing my comment and just seeing what Connie wrote.

Jeff: You hit on the design for an important tool. I'm not a techie, so don't know if it exists - at least in what I explored for back/forth between typepad and facebook. I've done it manually - by cross linking and summarizing ideas. Takes a lot of work.

Posted by: Beth Kanter at December 20, 2007 12:15 PM

Hmm ..Based on a subjective observation, I'm seeing some synergy and an increase in commenting in both places. The downside: Efficiency gets sacrificed on the alter of inspiration.

I have been doing community weaving on the Internet since I first got online in 1990 - I used weave and cross pollinate listservs and newsgroups. I use the same concepts across multiple social networks and communities.

I hate silos. I love cross disciplinary discussions. While my field is nonprofits and social change, those who interested in social are talking about a lot of the same issues I see other social media communities talk about- whether they are business oriented, education, or technical.

In terms of synergy between my blog and Facebook. My blog posts are auto posted from my typepad blog to my profile. I'm noticing in my facebook feed that people share those blog posts -- might comment on the item in Facebook, but sometimes click through and comment on the blog. I might also do an update on the blog post if there is an amazing insight by someone on Facebook - and share it with my blog readers. I'm weaving threads.

Many people I interact with in other communities aren't on Facebook or heavy users of Facebook. My friends/network on Facebook is relatively small compared to yours (750 friends). I have more readers, I think that come to the blog posts via RSS or links from another blogger or flickr or Youtube .. or listservs.

I do post notes and tag people in Facebook - after watching you do it (I do this with content isn't on my blog), but those notes are for discussion on article drafts or ideas. Then, I'll write a blog post summarizing what I've learned from Facebook comments which of course gets posted on my profile. I haven't invested a lot of that content and maybe that's why I haven't seen a drop of blog comments.

I'm just writing off the top of my head, but I am interested in this whole notion of community weaving, cross-network effects, and threading communities and conversations as well. Right now I'm experimenting with how to do this -- and leverage money to help Cambodian orphans.

Posted by: Beth Kanter at December 20, 2007 12:10 PM

Hi Connie,

It might be that Facebook never considered this before and I have to believe they won't mind contributing to the conversation. And if they block it, well, then we will have something else to talk about...

Posted by: Jeff Pulver at December 20, 2007 11:58 AM

That's a great idea Jeff! How do you think Facebook will feel about that? Are the garden walls too high for that?
I agree that it's all about the conversation (and where it happens isn't the point.

Posted by: Connie Bensen at December 20, 2007 11:22 AM

Hi Connie,

What I'm looking for is a moveable type plug-in / facebook application that for a specific blog URL and Facebook Note would track the "original" comments posted to each and properly insert comments to/from both platforms, thereby creating what looks like a threaded conversation.

And ideally, this is an application that can scale to include other social networks just in case there is a reason to share the same content across a variety of platforms.

If such a plug-in/Application doesn't exist, my hope that I find someone who has the skillset to develop it. And yes, it should also support all of the popular blogging platforms.

At the end of the day, I believe it is the conversation that matters. And finding the best tools to keep the conversation going would be a worthwhile investment from my perspective.

Posted by: Jeff Pulver at December 20, 2007 10:23 AM

I was expecting you to add this - but I don't think it's there.

When comments are on your blog then they are retained & are your 'property'. But in Facebook, are they? Will the reader who comes to your blog later get the same experience later when they read older posts? (they won't be seeing the conversations in Facebook). But the content will be the same. ... Just some questions that occurred to me.

The same goes for the conversations on Twitter - those aren't being recorded either

Posted by: Connie Bensen at December 20, 2007 10:10 AM

Jeff

This raises questions in my mind about whether it's more important to chase the attention or to build an asset that you control. It seems working for social network attn is a bit like sharecropping.

My hope is that the rise of open identity will encourage more blog community.

Posted by: James Lewin at December 20, 2007 10:04 AM

hey,
This is not a pity comment.
To me (only personal experience) - I don't go to the same content twice, so If I got to the content first on facebook (what usually happens) and I think I have some thing to contribute I will do it on the first encounter with the content.
Now, as a facebook friend, and a twitter follower, I got to this post on twitter.
I do think your on to something when talking about the fact that people have more to say when they are part of the debate, so If my picture and my name, and any who read can go to my page, I am more likely to comment - let my voice be heard, after all its my voice :).
D.

Posted by: Danny at December 20, 2007 09:29 AM

Well, this comment will echo an in-person comment I made to you last week in Paris, in reference to a comment made by someone at the table offering a general commentary, but it deserves comment here as well, so...well...oh, heck, just refer to my comment on your Facebook page! ;-)

Posted by: K² at December 20, 2007 09:26 AM

Same here Jeff, comments dropping 10-20% a month, very noticeable decline really.
What I am also noticing is that I get a huge amounts of comments on telecoms blog but very little comments on lifestyle posts.

Posted by: Pat Phelan at December 20, 2007 09:22 AM

December 20, 2007

“Where Have all the Comments Gone?”

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