Sarah Perez at TechCrunch brings up a point I’ve been thinking about myself lately:
Blog commenting systems are bizarre, broken and dated. TechCrunch recently switched from Facebook Comments to Livefyre – a change that, for the record, I had no say in. I’m not sure I see value. I don’t agree with some of the sentiment expressed here, which almost makes it sound like this site, and all its authors, missed the trolling days of TechCrunch Past. We don’t.
What was really missing, at least in my opinion, was the sense of community that blog comments once provided. But there’s no system alive that can bring that back, because that era of the web is over. And it has been for a long, long time…
The problem, which the Internet hasn’t solved at all, and has in fact even made worse, is that opinions are not created equal and therefore shouldn’t be considered in equal measure. The Internet has put people on such an even playing field that we now have to create entirely new systems to verify who’s worth listening to. From Google rankings to Techmeme headlines to retweets and number of followers, we’re still struggling to figure out who deserves to be heard.
I’ve been considering this problem on somewhat different terms: for me, the question is mostly how to best stimulate online conversation on my own blog. Should I switch to Facebook commenting? Use another system entirely? In general, the dropoff between number of people who’ve read a post and number who’ve commented is enormous. I’m still thinking of ways to make that engagement easier for people — and if you have any ideas, let ’em fly in the comments!
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