The Demise of the Comment

A little while ago, there was an enthusiastic discussion about comments on blogs – sparked by Fred Wilson’s contention that comments are how most bloggers are “paid” given most bloggers make little if any money from hammering out all those bon mots.

Then, Loren Feldman weighed in typical Loren fashion, suggesting that comments are not about a conversation but simply a vanity play by people interested in showing how smart they were – a post that, ironically, attracted 17 comments.

While I don’t totally buy into Loren’s thesis, I completely agree with one of his statements: “Nobody comments. I don’t have time to read, let alone comment”. What Loren did is hit upon what I see as a growing reality, the busier people digitally become, the less time and interest they have in making comments.

Think about it: many people who are the most predisposed to make comments are likely using Facebook, Twitter, Friendfeed, del.ico.us, Google Reader, Plurk, blogging and reading e-mail. The more services they use, the less time they have to do other things such as comment.

It doesn’t mean they’re not reading blogs; it means they’re probably flipping to another blog or checking their Twitter or writing a blog post rather than allocating time to make a comment. (Aside: Nothing drives me crazier than being inspired to make a comment, only to discover that you have to register to do it. I don’t have time to register so why make it more time-consuming than it needs to be!)

The ironic thing is people who write blogs, love comments, and tend to make comments in response to comments about their posts. Many of these people, however, don’t comment on other blogs anymore because they don’t have time…and so it goes.

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http://p0ps.tumblr.com Stephen Harlow

I thought with the entry of Disqus and Intense Debate, we’d be entering a new era of commenting.
If we could register one time and tweet, plurk, blog, seesmic, comment anywhere, follow friends’ feeds of all their activity and do all this from our phones when we want, by voice when we want, have any of it read to us if we like – maybe then, we’d have time…
http://www.jacklail.com/ Jack Lail

I understand the overwhelming flow of information part, but it could be that people are stealing time from non-digital activities, such as watching TV or reading a book or doing household chores.
http://www.justhardwork.blogspot.com Paul Marshall

OK now it just seems weird to “Comment on the demise of the comment” however….
I comment for a few reasons:

1. I am as busy as the next person but my mom always told me you get out of something what you put in to it. Engaging with different people through comments is a learning experience for me as I truly learn from *some* of the different perspectives I read on relevant topics for me which will help me drive my business forward.
2. I am a relatively new blogger myself and while my blog is nowhere near as read nor as good as someone like Mark and frankly most others out there I understand the notion of comments as currency.

For me I recognize people do not have time to comment and I prefer to look at how many new and returning users I have to my blog. While I don’t get comments on my blog this at least lets me know there are people out there reading and hopefully getting some value.
http://www.markevanstech.com Mark Evans

Paul,

Thanks for the comment! One thing that makes comment so good is when people offer more perspective and/or more information to correct, augment or expand a post.

Mark
http://www.profy.com/blog/ Cyndy Aleo-Carreira

Or, you know, they comment on FriendFeed. I wrote a post yesterday I was sure would generate comments, but got nothing on the post itself. On FriendFeed? It had about 10 within an hour of posting it.
http://broadcasting-brain.com Mark Dykeman

Then again, the “echo chamber” effect may turn off commentors because of the repetition between some blogs. It could be a collective “meh” that’s keeping the commentors away.
http://www.mylifeislikeasong.blogspot.com Suze

Had to add that other reasons that people (I guess I mean me) don’t comment is that they are in complete agreement with the blog, so don’t have anything valuable to add; they are not as knowledgeable as the blogger (this coming from a non-tech person) or perhaps even…a little shy.

So I’ll take this opportunity to add that although I am not commenting, I have been enjoying your blog (and have learned quite a bit).
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http://www.strategicmarketingmontreal.ca/otherbb/ Barry Welford

It really would be delightful if a good post item like this, could spawn a worthwhile discussion on the issues. Why would anyone bother? Well perhaps they care about the issue. Of course if the blog follows the Google behest and NoFollows all commenters’ links as this blog does, then there is almost zero value to the commenter in making the comment. Given that Google puts such weight on worthwhile (hyper)links, it’s a somewhat paradoxical position on Google’s part. However I guess their algorithms have problems so they’ve got to arrange the world to help those algorithms function. It’s a strange world.
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