donnacha's dashboard

Great, thanks Michael, seems like the commenting niche is evolving at high speed these days :)

Keep up the good work! – donnacha, on December 22, 2008 21:44

Thanks db0, good to know.

Of course, a more obvious route, one that didn't require code and another service to host the image, would encourage a wider range of people to post them. – donnacha, on December 22, 2008 21:44

You are unbelievable - you just seem to want to post in every single thread without actually reading the original posts. I say, clearly, in the last paragraph, that I have posted about ID at the developer's site and, the whole point of the post, I suggest that other ID users post too, so that he knows there is a demand for this.

Please, stop haunting me, it's getting embarrassing.

Some sobering numbers, from this Data Center Knowledge article, released today, which reveal just how big the Facebook elephant is:

Facebook Adding 600,000 Users A Day

... and Facebook's own statistics page.

More than 140 million active users (previously, in the other thread, we had been saying 130 million).

Average user has 100 friends on the site - all of whom can view comments injected into the user's feed.

More than 13 million users update their status every day.

600,000 new users per day.

- “If Facebook continues at this rate, it could add up to 20 million new users in December and reach 200 million active users by March,”

More than 70% outside the US.

35 translations available, more than 60 in development, so, lots of room for growth.

Dude, you don't seem to even TRY to understand what other people say, or to follow ANY of the links. If you did, you'd realize that I was referring specifically to the video that shows ordinary people how to add FC in 8 minutes by, you know, typing the code. For 8 minutes.

You'd also have noticed that Techcrunch got a 20% bump in comments - that is a cold, hard fact, one that won't disappear simply because you, personally, don't think it could or should make a difference.

I don't mind well though-out and argued criticism, but you seem to just wander around this website, shooting down everything anyone else has to contribute - I've yet to see you make a positive comment of any kind. I honestly can't imagine what world you live in if you don't think the potential of Facebook as a competitor is not a serious consideration for both ID and Automattic. Seriously, are you a bot? Did someone create you as part of a bet?

If you could just slow down and think before you shoot, you might actually pick up some new ideas.

And you probably wouldn't make dumb mistakes like duplicate posting.

db0, I think you're missing the point. The option to sign in using an account they already have at Facebook, into which they've already invested their time and uploaded a photo, lowers the barrier to participation for 130+ million people.

After just 12 days, 20% of Techcrunch commenters were using Facebook Connect, and that is a BIG blog that already had lots of users, most of them signed-up, regular visitors; the effect on a small blog would be far more dramatic, because you would have a larger portion of non-committed, passing traffic who have no interest in becoming members but might, just might, be willing to make a comment if it is easy enough for them and they already see their smug little face smiling out at them, appealing to their ego and letting them know that they are already signed-in.

For low-readership blogs (and the vast majority of them are), this could be the tipping point that gets them ten comments rather than none. It also means that more comments are accompanied by avatars, making the discussion more attractive and credible, making your blog stickier.

Appearing in each commenter's Facebook feed (which is an OPTION) is the most personal and, therefore, effective endorsement imaginable - the commenter is saying "Hey, look at this conversation I'm having!". Yes, it is small-scale, limited to their circle of friends, but the chances are high that they have similar interests and, therefore, will be interested in your blog.

Don't forget, the commenter will now also be addressing two audiences: your blog's readership AND their own friends, giving a deeply personal incentive to make a well-written, positive contribution. They are getting a double return on their investment of time in making the comment: joining your discussion but also adding content to their Facebook presence. Facebook integration will increase the quantity, quality and distribution of your blog's comments.

Of course, those are all advantages for ID users but not necessarily ID itself. Trust me, this is a political / strategic decision that probably has ID terrified, the technical side is trivial and not something that is going to detract resources from your pet interests - it takes 8 minutes to integrate Facebook Connect, by hand not plugin, into an individual WordPress blog, it would not take more then an hour to make the same change to the ID system, they probably already have a test version running with Facebook integrated.

Make no mistake, the big issue here is not HOW to do this but whether or not they SHOULD be getting into bed with a giant who could, quite easily, roll over and crush them - Techcrunch have written an interesting article about this,
Soon, All Your Blog Comments Will Belong To Facebook (Or Google), and the comments are worth reading too.

The key question for ID is whether whey would be undermining the incentive for commenters to sign up to ID itself, when they can simply keep using their Facebook identity. Of course, serious commenters will quickly realize that there are advantages to skipping Facebook and using an ID account instead: Facebook-Connected comments link only to your PUBLIC Facebook profile, which is pretty much useless, revealing almost nothing about you, whereas your ID profile displays your other comments AND links to your blogs, Facebook page and other social networks, Twitter etc.

Unless Facebook decide to start archiving comments themselves (and it is highly unlikely that they will change their whole model to pursue such a niche market, especially as it would kill all trust in their developer community), Disqus and ID will retain this advantage, and commenters will realize this pretty quickly once they develop the commenting habit. ID should be confident and see Facebook Connect as a way to entice newbie commenters into becoming participants, knowing that they will graduate to becoming ID members in time. This is a great way for ID and Disqus to grow piggyback on Facebook's massive userbase and peel away some of it for themselves, while keeping blog owners happy too. – donnacha, on December 17, 2008 16:07

Hey, Jonathan, good to see a high profile ID user asking for this too!

It would be good to hear the whole issue of commenting systems discussed on the next WordPress Podcast i.e. what you gain balanced against what you lose in terms of control and ability to implement features yourself. I think this is going to be a big issue over the next year and this Facebook Connect situation illustrates it nicely. – donnacha, on December 16, 2008 23:33

Wow, Disqus have grabbed the initiative on this, according to a blog post today by Disqus CEO Daniel Ha.



Mashable have a good article, explaining why this is such an important move: Disqus to Integrate Facebook Connect.

The key points in that article:

Facebook Connect created a bit of a problem for third-party commenting plugins like Disqus. One of the original premises of their business – that having one login that worked across blogs would increase comments – is severely threatened by Facebook, who has 130+ million users already. Not to mention, when blogs utilize Facebook Connect for their comments, they are fed back into the Facebook News Feed, creating extra traffic.

Today, Disqus is wisely responding, letting its customers know that they will soon be integrating Facebook Connect.

...

Problem solved for Disqus? Maybe. The service still has lots of advantages over simply integrating Facebook Connect into your blog, like giving users their own profile to keep track of their comments, easy installation including a WordPress plugin, video integration with Seesmic, and support for trackbacks.

Svetlana Gladkova also has some interesting thoughts on the integration of Facebook Connect into commenting systems such as Intense Debate and Disqus:

The viral growth effect is very similar to what you get when you ask your visitors to bookmark your site on Delicious or vote for it on Digg - but in this case you will only have to ask users once if they want their activities on the site to be sent back to Facebook and broadcasted to all their friends on the social network via news feeds. So once the confirmation is here every time a user performs an action on the site, the site owner will get some additional free visibility - what really can be more appealing for web publishers?

We all know that an owner of any website will hardly want to avoid using an additional marketing channel to promote the website where your own visitors will help you get extra visibility for your content. And of course blogges are no exception, especially those blogging professionally and trying to get any extra monetizable traffic we can so I’d expect bloggers more than willing to support Facebook Connect program.

And it is quite understandable: after all, usually your post only has chances of appearing on Facebook when you write something particularly good that people will find interesting enough to share with their friends - but that takes a couple of extra steps, including your reader thinking about actually helping you promote your content and posting it to Facebook. But if you support Facebook Connect in commenting functionality of your blog, your readers will be able to help your content get some extra visibility every time they leave a comment using Facebook for their credentials. I expect we will see Facebook Connect plugins for popular blogging platforms launched pretty soon for every blogger to be able to implement the functionality easily on a blog.

...

So I’d expect many professional blogs adding Facebook Connect functionality in the nearest days while dedicated blog commenting services like Disqus should really think about supporting Facebook Connect themselves - at least to keep the bloggers they already work with happy with their commenting functionality instead of returning to standard commenting functionality with Facebook Connect supported.

My personal guess is that, unless ID are absolutely confident that the weight their purchase by Automattic gives them is enough to ignore the 130+ million Facebook users, they really don't have a choice, they have to integrate it.

But, again, the political considerations within Automattic are going to be the main barrier, not the technical challenge.

Personally, though, this is a MUST HAVE FEATURE before adopting ID on all of my websites.

As I understand it, Google's Friend Connect would be pretty much impossible to integrate with ID, all you can really do with it is insert self-contained widgets that don't actually interact with the rest of your site or your database.

Facebook Connect, however, has an API that would integrate pretty smoothly with ID on the technical level but, of course, the politics of it is quite a different thing: it would make WordPress and ID more accessible to the massive Facebook userbase but Automattic might worry that integrating in any way could harm their chances of later selling to one of the other big players.

Personally, I reckon that encouraging the Facebook masses to participate more on ID sites would actually do a lot to improve Automattic's valuation but, of course, at this stage, with so much at stake, they're probably terrified of making the wrong moves. – donnacha, on December 15, 2008 21:25