2008 has seen a big change in the way the blogging community communicates with each other. In a nutshell, discussions have become very fragmented. There are two main reasons for this: firstly Twitter and its 140 character soundbites has become very popular among bloggers, and secondly FriendFeed has tipped as the lifestreaming aggregator of choice for many people. The upshot is that there are now many places where people can have online discussions. This has been a challenge to blog publishers, for whom comments are an integral part of the blogging experience.
Over the past few months, the ReadWriteWeb team has been discussing internally how to adapt to this. We've discussed whether to use services such as Disqus, YackTrack and SezWho, which enable people to track, organize and rate blog comments. However our conclusion was that those types of apps are unsuitable for a large multi-author blog like ReadWriteWeb - there are question marks over ability to handle the load, what happens if the service goes down, SEO, and other issues. And to be frank, personally I haven't found the user experience of any of those apps to be very compelling (we've tested one of them on RWW before).
So we got to discussing how to utilize FriendFeed and/or Twitter in ReadWriteWeb. To make a long story short, ReadWriteWeb recently implemented a new Movable Type plug-in called FriendFeed Comments. The plug-in was developed by Mark Carey and it enables FriendFeed comments to show up on ReadWriteWeb posts as comments - and vice versa! Note that there is a similar Wordpress plug-in, developed by Glenn Slaven.
Full disclosure, Mark Carey is a Technical Consultant for ReadWriteWeb. But he also runs his own business, which includes developing Movable Type plug-ins. So ReadWriteWeb was the first blog to test FriendFeed Comments out. As Mark explains, it "enables you to import and display comments made using FriendFeed on your entries. You can also use the plugin to enable your blog commenter to "Cc." their comments to FriendFeed (if they have a FriendFeed account)."
Here is an illustration of how it works:
People commenting in FriendFeed about our post profiling Identi.ca
The FriendFeed comments show up on the RWW post
To send comments from RWW into FriendFeed, simply click the 'cc' link
What I love about the MT and Wordpress FriendFeed plug-ins is that they recognize the fact that conversations are occurring elsewhere, but they bring the discussion back to the source of the content where relevant. It's win-win as far as I can see.
Six Apart's David Recorden implied in a post that the FriendFeed plug-in operates in a similar way to Trackback [update: David clarifies in a comment that he didn't mean from a technical perspective, "but rather that the idea of bridging conversations around the web is very similar."].
On that point, RWW has had a lot of issues with trackback. During our discussions internally about the plug-in, we also considered if it could somehow be adapted to replace or augment trackbacks. Because frankly trackbacks don't work for us. We are one of the most linked-to blogs in the world, yet we get just a trickle of trackbacks. So if there is a way to integrate link-backs into ReadWriteWeb as easily as the FriendFeed plug-in integrates outside discussion, then I'd be one very happy publisher! Consider that a challenge to the plug-in developers out there ;-)
What are your thoughts on the state of distrubuted discussions in the blogosphere? And how can we give trackback the same makeover that blog comments has gotten in 2008?
Comments
Subscribe to comments for this post OR Subscribe to comments for all Read/WriteWeb posts
Thanks for clarifying David, I've added a note to the post.
Posted by: Richard MacManus
|
July 3, 2008 4:34 PM
This looks like a great solution fro RWW. I have been looking for a way to integrate a friendfeed connection of comments into my blog on WP, and this is now possible. One thing to note though is that Disqus now has trackback support (http://blog.disqus.net/2008/06/17/support-for-trackbacks-in-disqus/) although it looks like you are looking to get ff trackback support to really show the community who has linked back to the post. I think its a good idea to try to condense the conversation and make sure you have entry points at multiple locations. I will definitely be interested to see how it all works out.
Posted by: Eric Friedman | July 3, 2008 5:17 PM
I'm finding FriendFeed more and more useful... it's kind of scary. AFAIC, I'm interested to see how this "CC" integration will work moving forward.
It seems that a better approach, however, would be to enable me to create an account on ReadWriteWeb with my OpenID and then use OAuth to authorize my comments to be sent to my FriendFeed account, rather than having to type in my key everytime.
Posted by: Chris Messina
|
July 3, 2008 5:32 PM
Sweet integration! I almost want to have an MT blog now, but I know Disqus is gonna come through for me in the end. Right, Daniel? Daniel?
Anyway, good job, looks great and it really raises FriendFeed's profile here on RWW.
Posted by: J. Phil
|
July 3, 2008 5:37 PM
w00t! just want to make sure that this shows up in the FF comment stream too. thanks for the info!
Posted by: ~C4Chaos
|
July 3, 2008 5:37 PM
@factoryjoe, I have thought about that approach as well. I may very well update the plugin in future such that your FF account can be linked to your MT login (whether native or OpenID). That would certainly make things smoother, as all your would need to enter is your openID.
Posted by: Mark Carey
|
July 3, 2008 5:43 PM
I was just watching a presentation by Tapscott (wikinomics dude), with a panel of "next generation" Gen y'ers in front of big name NY execs. I was thinking it was unfair to mislead all these senior executives that they are representative of most people their age - the panel are just early tech adopters like everyone else here (rather than typical 22 year olds). But I've just come back to reality, realising how early adopters influence the masses - this is a perfect example of how a early adopter crowd influence an early adopter blog which in turns influences the mainstream media which in turn influence the mass market. News like this mark turning points for these products I think.
Posted by: Elias Bizannes
|
July 3, 2008 5:45 PM
I think this is a cool feature and had to try it.
I notice that some people have a blog-entry item that does inverse linking -- reporting pages that link to the blog entry.
It looks like this is automated. I think that would be very useful and I am out to find out more.
Wouldn't this (perhaps) solve the track-back problem. There would have to be some sort of white-list/black-list system to deal with link bait, though, wouldn't there?
Posted by: Dennis E. Hamilton
|
July 3, 2008 5:48 PM
I changed the title, to remove Twitter. It's not technically correct that we're integrating Twitter -- although of course the link that attracts FriendFeed comments could come from Twitter. In this case it came from the RWW rss feed, but it also went to Twitter via Tweetfeed. The trouble with these things is they make one's head hurt :-)
Posted by: Richard
|
July 3, 2008 6:11 PM
Ah, now I am in FriendFeed and can see how this works from this side. Have to find the opportunity to comment in Twhirl too and I will be very happy.
Posted by: Dennis E. Hamilton
|
July 3, 2008 6:15 PM
I figure I’ll explain what’s going on with that. Currently, there are only two major blogging platforms that use TrackBacks: Movable Type and WordPress. Of those two, there are two different interpretations of how TrackBacks are handled. While both systems handle TrackBacks well, they’ve branched in default setup.
For MT, when you set up a blog, you have to both enable TrackBack acceptance at the system, blog, and post level. Nice security feature, but you need to know to turn it on. You could be losing those links by sheer ignorance.
WP has greatly depreciated TrackBack use. At one point it worked will with MT’s discovery protocol. As of around version 2.5 or so, WP encourages pingbacks and refers sites that accept TrackBacks as “legacy blog systems.” I could actually see them dropping TrackBack support out of the box without much complaint.
With the vast majority of bloggers using WordPress, it seems logical that you don’t get much TrackBack actions. Then again, the only value I saw in TrackBacks was getting somebody to link to me for free. The years have shown that free links like that are virtually useless (e.g. the 8 zillion pings on every TechCrunch post).
Posted by: Stansbury
|
July 3, 2008 6:18 PM
@Richard: Interesting. The title doesn't change in FriendFeed, of course, but your comment about it does, which I guess is close enough for computer work.
Posted by: Dennis E. Hamilton
|
July 3, 2008 6:18 PM
the other cool thing is that the FF comments actually get saved to our RWW publishing software. So if FF ever went down or stopped working, the comments will still be on RWW.
Posted by: Richard
|
July 3, 2008 6:42 PM
Hey Richard,
FF integration looks great and great that you get the comments back into your system so you don't worry about other systems going down/SEO etc.
I think SezWho holds the most promise although I agree with you point about the user experience.
Take a look at the new interface they have come up with for crunchgear.com
I am waiting to see when/if they release it out for everybody.
-Stan
Posted by: Stan Hughes | July 3, 2008 8:00 PM
I love this feature! I wish the WordPress plugin worked in a similar fashion.
Posted by: Mack D. Male
|
July 3, 2008 8:50 PM
Looking good!
Posted by: Hao Chen
|
July 3, 2008 9:00 PM
When I try to post trough Feedly, I get -error: 404 -- undefined'. Hmm... but it seems this is only true for some posts and not for others.
Posted by: Kris Haamer
|
July 3, 2008 10:01 PM
(Kris: thanks for the heads up. we are looking into this bug. will update http://www.getstatisfaction.com/feedly and our blog when it is fixed).
Posted by: Edwin Khodabakchian
|
July 3, 2008 10:07 PM
Does anybody know if anything like this exists for Blogger?
Posted by: Simone | July 3, 2008 11:20 PM
Test post
Posted by: Thomas Lundberg
|
July 4, 2008 12:54 AM
who the heck gives a monkey's cuss?
Posted by: Dennis Howlett
|
July 4, 2008 12:57 AM
cool
Posted by: Michael McGimpsey
|
July 4, 2008 1:05 AM
Wow! Looks great. An elegant solution.
Posted by: Chris Baskind
|
July 4, 2008 1:05 AM
Good enough reason to take a second look at Movable Type
Posted by: Andy Roberts
|
July 4, 2008 1:59 AM
Nice work with the CC to FriendFeed, I really like the direction that this is going and FriendFeed integration with sites is definitely the way forward!
Posted by: Joe Dawson
|
July 4, 2008 3:34 AM
Wonderful! I integrated FF comment in my hosted WP blog in minutes! Thanks folks!
Posted by: Eugenio | July 4, 2008 6:24 AM
Wow, this is cool.
Posted by: Ryan Lejbak
|
July 4, 2008 6:58 AM
cool .... i swear a blog is coming that is ONLY comments, and a prize will be offered to determine what the article was about
dang, startup anybody?
Posted by: gregory lent
|
July 4, 2008 12:14 PM
Why doesnt FriendFeed share with other services? Instead of just gathering from other sources?
Posted by: donclark
|
July 5, 2008 11:27 AM
It isn't so much that I think that the FriendFeed plugin is like TrackBack from a technical perspective, but rather that the idea of bridging conversations around the web is very similar. This glimpse of FriendFeed integration might also show what a future version of TrackBack could look like. Either way, it really is about how we can all use rich APIs to bridge content, identity, and other aspects of the social web as we move from site to site.
Posted by: David Recordon
|
July 5, 2008 5:15 PM
so what - isn't everyone doing that?
Posted by: Dennis Howlett
|
July 5, 2008 6:31 PM
Simone - Yes, check out Pat Hawk's FriendFeed Comment Widget:
http://www.pathawks.com/2008/06/friendfeed-comment-widget.html
Posted by: J. Phil | July 5, 2008 6:35 PM
Dennis, it's relatively uncommon for multi-author blogs to. it was difficult to implement until the MT and wordpress plugins came along.
Posted by: Richard
|
July 5, 2008 11:42 PM
I love it!
Posted by: Sarah Austin
|
July 5, 2008 11:46 PM
I'm currently using Wordpress for my blog system. I'm going to try to install this: http://blog.slaven.net.au/wordpress-plugins/friendfeed-comments-wordpress-plugin/ , At least that's the only one I found for Wordpress. I may be wrong. But this is a great idea!
Posted by: Dennis Jackson
|
July 6, 2008 12:02 AM
Yes, discussions have become very fragmented. It is a problem that needs to be solved. This is a step in the right direction. Good move for RWW. But... still way to go until there is a good global solution.
Posted by: efimor | July 6, 2008 9:27 AM
The power of social network
Posted by: LouCypher
|
July 8, 2008 9:58 AM
I tried Sezwho on my site for quite a while and ended up deciding that I really didn't like it. That having been said, I've been using Mark's Friendfeed Comments plugin for about a week now and I really like it.
Posted by: Richard Miles
|
July 26, 2008 7:11 PM
how is twitter integrated though?
Posted by: Aziz Poonawalla
|
July 26, 2008 9:57 PM
The problem with this is that friendfeed comments are brought to the blog, but the blog comments are not brought to friendfeed. This fragmentation of discussion is one of the things that are the problem with Web 2.0.
Posted by: Aziz Poonawalla | July 26, 2008 10:02 PM
Smart move guys!! yeah!
Posted by: Susan Beebe
|
July 26, 2008 10:07 PM