Social Media is Social – So Why Closed Comments?
Take a look at the phrase “social media” – what would your response be if you were asked its literal meaning?
The most obvious answer would be media that is social – whether that’s participating in an online group, sharing your views on a topic or leaving a comment on a blog, offering your opinion and insight. So why do so many proponents of social media come across as anything but social?
I’m mainly talking about blogs that either have closed comments, or require you to register with the site to leave a comment. Maybe it’s just me, but personally I feel that takes away the whole social aspect of social media.
My take on social media is that it’s a combination of different tools and communities, all coming together to offer an invaluable and co-operative journey with online friends. Even business social media is more about how businesses can reach their customers effectively and pro-actively, therefore building a loyal online database that ensures the company’s growth and sustainability.
So why potentially ruin this new world by sticking with the old cliquish approach of invite-only commenting?
I know that it’s down to personal choice as to whether you allow comments on your blog or not – after all, one of the negative sides of the blogosphere (at least in the early days) has been the puerile comments that are often left.
(Although thanks to the likes of BackType, the quality of blog comments should hopefully improve to a consistent level of maturity along the lines of those found on the leading social media blogs).
But isn’t this what comment filters are for? Having the option to approve all comment posts before publication eliminates (or at the very least, greatly reduces) playground-level comments.
Perhaps the blogs that have closed comments or require membership to post a response do so in the belief that it helps build their own specific community. This seems plausible, since the majority of blogs that I’ve come across with closed or member comments only do seem to be of the business variety.
I can’t help but feel that they’re missing out, though. Sure, a members-only comment option may encourage a number of people to sign up so that they can join in the discussion. Yet at the same time, you can pretty much guarantee this is a far smaller number than the amount of commentators you’d get with an open comment policy.
And if you don’t know what your readers are really thinking, aren’t you missing the whole point of building your brand and voice through the social media medium? Doesn’t seem like good business to me…
What do you think? Does it matter if comments are closed? Do you feel the need to share your opinion on something you’ve just read, or are you more interested in what’s being said as opposed to what you want to say? I’d be interested on your views.
27 Responses to “Social Media is Social – So Why Closed Comments?”
What frustrates me more than anything is when a fantastic blog really draws debate, but then insists on making commentators sign up before comments are allowed. You know what? It’s them that loses out. I benefit from their knowledge, but they won’t benefit from mine. If I feel really strongly about an article, I may post it to Digg or one of the other news communities, but this requires significantly more effort on my behalf, as I have to effectively ‘sell’ someone elses’ story to a new community. I would assume that very few people would be willing to undertake such action for someone elses’ gain.
I remember reading about Versioning years and years ago (was it ‘Blown to Bits’, or ‘Information Rules’, I can’t remember). Why isn’t this principle being used effectively here? If the blog or site absolutely insists on registering users, do so with the offer of giving something back in return. Don’t deter people from imparting their knowledge on your debate; that’s just daft!
The Lovable Rogue´s last blog post..It’s all about Growth… Or is it?
Hi Sue,
It does seem to take away the whole “community” aspect of it all. I can see the reasons for MySpace privacy, with the abundance of spammers on that particular site. Yet I’m not quite sure why blogs would fall into the same category.
There are excellent spam filter tools (free and premium) that stop malicious or spammy comments getting through. And, as I mentioned, for companies that keep comments closed on their business blogs, it doesn’t seem a particularly effective way to encourage potential customers/clients to choose them.
Thanks for reading and commenting (in this open comment forum!).
You got it in one, Chris.
Blogs or sites that don’t feel the need to open up and share with their community are simply risking the same feeling in return – as you say, why would you take the time to share their story with your friends if they can’t even allow you to share your views with them?
As social media continues to evolve and the benefits of full and immersive interaction come to the fore, those that aren’t using it now will find it’s too late to become involved and open up.
Thanks for sharing your views, appreciate your comments.
I tend to agree that eliminating comments entirely is a bad move, something akin to blog suicide, but I’m not so sure about limiting comments to registered users. There is a trade off here.
If someone registers then it is much more likely that he or she will become a regular. You choose between having loads of casual commentators or fewer more dedicated ones. After all registration has been required on forums since their inception and nobody seems to complain.
Regards, George
George Cozma´s last blog post..More Link Love, an Upcoming Contest, Some Twitter Musings and Why Entrecard Sucks
Lots of sites do things to make comments difficult or unlikely. Sometimes they hide the usability with clever controls. Other times, they require logging in (to try and cut spam). Sometimes, they have crap-ass captcha that makes it harder than passing a test at Harvard to get a response up.
GIGO, the coders say. Garbage in, …
So yeah.
Chris Brogan…´s last blog post..Quick Dad-o-Matic Update
@ George. I see where you’re coming from re. having to register for forums, and having a trade-off between casual commentators and regular posters. However, the way I look at it is that people who register for something do so because they already have a positive view about that subject. Compare that to people who can simply leave any comment they wish, and it’s the difference between a biased view and an honest view. But… that’s just how I see it.
@ Chris: And that’s the point. There are so many ways to keep control of your comments that it seems bizarre to try and limit them via your actual comment box. Unless you have no interest in what your readers are saying – which seems kind of redundant to me?
Danny,
For me, the key to the new social media is leaving nobody left out of the party.
I see the close comments phenomenon as if reverting to the old media.
Do you remember those days of seeing a couple of pages with only selected letters to the printed magazine?
KerenKeren Dagan´s last blog post..Being Chris Brogan
I remember these days all too well, Keren – I was always of the opinion, “What? That’s it? But they didn’t cover my thoughts at all!”
Which is exactly how I feel about the closed comments approach – how can you possibly gauge what your readers are thinking if you don’t ask them?
Thanks for sharing your view.
The thing with blogs etc is that there are so many of them that it makes signing up for each one of these communities impractical. At present, I follow around 35 blogs or so, which I imagine is a small figure in comparison to some people. If I had to register on each of these communities simply to donate my insight I am certain that the number of blogs which I were following would drop considerably.
Picking up on Keren and George’s points, perhaps the ‘closed community’ approach is an attempt to not only hold onto the old media approach, but also to retain a connection the early web. As George mentions, registration has been obligatory for forums since their creation. Whilst registration can help build a profile of a user, thus helping to confirm authenticity, pushing users away through the implementation of a registration form jeopardises comments from interested observers.
The Lovable Rogue´s last blog post..It’s all about Growth… Or is it?
Bloggers that don’t allow comments on their blogs are not bloggers. They are people with static web sites. I don’t even bother subscribing…not because I feel the urge to comment on everything I see, but because the comments are often as interesting (or in the case of my blog, MORE interesting
than what the blogger wrote in the first place!Susan Murphy´s last blog post..To Vote or Not To Vote
@ Susan. I agree – that’s often what separates blogs from any other type of online commentary, the interaction on the posts. Like you, I’ve seen some fantastic conversations take place in the comments section, and I’ve also learned previously unknown information (or been intrigued enough to click on a link).
Without that interactivity, I may as well just read a newspaper…
Thanks for sharing your views.
I agree Susan. I hate to throw around a somewhat outdated term, but Web 2.0 saw an evolution from the static to the dynamic; the tools which allowed participation were created and made available so that people could really collaborate and create progress together (this is discussed well in Wikinomics by Tapscott and Williams). I believe that what is commonly termed Web 2.0 was simply the point at which these technologies were made available, the driving factor behind which was a changing social pattern which revolved around connectivity and creativity. Interesting stuff!
The Lovable Rogue´s last blog post..It’s all about Growth… Or is it?
Great point there, Chris. Anywhere you read something online, you can be pretty much guaranteed that you will come across positive evangelism regarding Web 2.0 and how it’s opened up the web to everyone.
Then you see the same people with a closed comment section on their blogs – seems counter-productive to me.
Well stated! What good is a blog if you can’t interact with your visitors? You might as well just have a standard html page with your info.
Hey Danny,
I think one of the most important things to having a real and meaningful discussion in the comments is that it is allowed to take place in real time (or as close to as possible). That isn’t possible if a blogger is moderating his/her comments.
For bloggers that are concerned with spam it’s worth looking at third party commenting systems like Disqus. I’ve rarely seen a spam comment on a Disqus enabled blog.
PS thanks for the link.
I left my last comment without realizing you moderated your comments. I assumed you didn’t given the quality of the conversation here. You must do a good job of allowing good comments through quickly.
Having said that I still think moderation is a barrier to conversations, especially in the extreme cases when it takes days for some bloggers to approve my comments. When conversations can happen quickly and can be discovered the way we discover great posts I think we’ll see some even better discussions happening.
Hi Mike,
Unfortunately, even with some of the best filters, Spam can still find a way of getting through (hence my preference to spam filter and moderation, to offer double protection).
I agree with you regarding it acting as a possible barrier to conversation/instant response to conversation, although I think this may have more to do with the blogger moderating as opposed to the method itself. Maybe if we can devise a system that is foolproof at sorting spam from quality, we can begin to leave the doors open as far as immediate comment authorization. We can but hope…
Thanks for reading and commenting, appreciate it.
I think blogs took over the web world because they were in fact a social form of a website. Until blogs came around you could visit someone else’s website but there was very little interaction if any. By letting visitors engage in conversations with other visitors and the site owner over the topic on hand makes for a very successful form of web media.
That being said, a blog that wants to restrict that communication by forcing users to register for the ability to comment with others will only stifle it’s creativity and usefulness. I run several blogs myself and the only hindrance I place on my users is that there is a form of moderation in place and I only institute that to restrict the flow of spam commenting.
I personally refuse to comment where I have to register. My thought is that if I took the time to read your article then you should listen to what I have to say about it. If I wanted to take time to register and login I’d find another forum to join
B. Durant´s last blog post..No sherrif evictions in Chicago area
Two other methods that can help to encourage comments are allowing DoFollow links (removing default nofollow attributes so that “link juice” is passed to the sites) and installing the KeywordLuv plugin, which significantly helps commenters with SEO because it allows them to choose the anchor text for links.
Overall, it is a good thing to encourage comments because the extra content provided by other people adds more keywords to your posts, which in turn brings in more traffic from the search engines without costing you any more time than it takes to write the original post.
Thank you for sharing. I came to this site to read how things really are
Excellent post. There’s a lot good information correct here, though I did want to let you know something – I’m running Mac pc Os with the latest experiment with of Firefox, and the actual appear and feel your own weblog is kind associated with quirky for me. I read the posts, nevertheless the navigation doesn’t work therefore nicely.
Sure it’s not Safari? I run my Mac with FF and everything’s fine, but if I switch to Safari the navigation seems to jump one box for some reason.
Though a redesign is coming soon, so that may solve the issue
I agree. I’m often sparked/intrigued by a blog, info, photo etc that has a comment area but am discouraged when registration is required. Also, several MySpace profile are “private”; what’s the point? However, I suppose they have their reasons. Sue.