Scoble is Wrong About Blog Comments Being Dead

June 30, 2008

I think Robert Scoble suffers from the disease of early adopter-itis. What does that mean? Well, like many tech bloggers (including myself), Scoble is an early adopter. This means he tries new things way ahead of most of the people on the Internet. When you’re way out ahead, the problem is that you forget that 95% of the people on the Internet are still playing catch-up.

Such is the case when Scoble declared that blog comments are dead. Um, no. You realize, Robert, that much of the Internet is only now catching up with blogging. Blogging is reaching mainstream and I’m now seeing people of all stripes running blogs. You simply can’t call something dead when most of the Internet is now using it. Simply put, most of the Internet is NOT on FriendFeed and Twitter.

The reason you get more comments on FriendFeed is because the commentary is now detached from the post and is taking place somewhere where a lot of people hang out. But, this doesn’t mean the blog comment is dead.

A blog comment adds to the content of your post. Commentary adds value to the post itself. There is value to the comments being tied to the post itself. A discussion on FriendFeed is great for conversation, but being removed from the post limits the future value of that commentary for future readers.

Calling blog comments dead would be like calling the editorial page in the newspaper dead simply because people gather around the water cooler and talk about the content IN the newspaper. Not so.

Scoble’s post is generating discussion on FriendFeed…more than on the post itself on his blog. Does this prove Scoble’s point? No. The blog post which generated this discussion was written ONLY to spur conversation. It has no content. No value. If it did contain something useful, the comments on this blog would certainly be more valuable than those on FriendFeed because those on his blog would help drive traffic to his blog. They would be forever tied to that post so that it can be viewed later. In contrast, the FriendFeed discussion will die off tomorrow and would forever be lost if Scoble had not manually linked to it.

Looks like Louis Gray also sees that blog comments are not dead.

This debate will rage for awhile longer. Comment fragmentation is an issue every blogger ends up deciding on at some point.

So, does being an early adopter mean you’re out of touch?

If you enjoyed this article, you might also like...

  1. No, Links are NOT Dead, Scoble and Gillmore
  2. The Secret To Attracting More Comments On Your Blog
  3. Curse Of Being an Early Adopter and Tech Blogger
  4. The FriendFeed Orgasm And Why It Is Off The Mark
  5. Blog Comments And a HUGE Wasted Opportunity
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  • The value of Robert's post, if any, was merely to provoke discussion. I'd say he conducted a little experiment on everyone to see what we'd say.

    Clever guy. Who knows what he really thinks?
  • The headline sounded more interesting than saying what I actually think, which is that comments are about 2/3rds of the way to dying. :-)
  • Easier to say completely dead than 2/3 dead, might remind one of a zombie. ;)
  • Yeah, the headline worked, Robert. Clearly. :)
  • David-
    I agree that Robert may be jumping the gun just a smidge. But I did recently have the scenario where there was an entire dialogue happening on FriendFeed about my post where only 3 people commented on the actual blog.

    FriendFeed somehow seems to solicit a conversation more than blogs. Why is that? Is it design or more psychologically appealing to the commenters? Somehow being detached from the blog and more free to comment freely without being part of a the bigger entity?

    Thoughts to ponder.
  • Oh, I' feel so manipulated!... David I pretty much agree with your article above. Surely Robert understands the dynamic of people following him whereever he goes that is created by his high profile stature. I'm sure he also realizes the value of the comments that are associated with his blog posts.
  • hey david,
    definitely agree with you that comments are not dead. they will always attract the kinds of people who can tolerate the occasional chaos of competing voices...but i think that entrepreneurs are now figuring out more varied ways to get people to engage on a blog. comments on friendfeed are still just that - comments. and they are not the only way that people can interact around content.
  • commenting to show my agreement with the statement that blog comments are not dead..
  • Yeah, what Paul said.
  • I don't think blog comments are dead, either. Honestly, I think FriendFeed comments could be cool if somehow all the fragments were put back together and tied to the original post, but so far that hasn't happened.
  • gregory
    comments are becoming the new blog ...

    no more pontification and then replies, merely discussion, like walking into a coffee shop

    first one that can lay that out on a page has a business
  • Yeah, well I claim the color orange to be dead!

    What does that mean? Who knows. Saying blog comments are dead is nothing more than a grab at attention/traffic. It's a short sighted and fairly foolish statement that doesn't seem to mean anything.

    Let's recap - FriendFeed for Scoble yields more conversation on some posts from his blog comments. Yeah. Well, considering the blog post where he claimed blog comments are dead (whatever the hell that means) generated a bunch of comments seems to kill whatever theory he was trying to push.
  • Comments + their owner’s copyright is an interesting one.

    Personally, I think comments on a site become the site’s property.
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