Comment Away!

For those who hadn't heard, Blogger recently launched the feature I'd been working on for the last few months - threaded commenting: http://buzz.blogger.com/2012/01/engage-with-your-readers-through.html


This post is mostly just a call to everyone reading to comment more on blogs - Blog authors like it when they get (non-spam) comments, and commenters get to engage with the author and hopefully discuss with someone who shares an interest. More on this later, but first I have to say, a big thankyou to our users; for both their patience in getting this feature, and the positive reaction to it. What do I mean by the latter? I was a bit of a social-network junkie after launch, searching for reactions, and so throughout this post the images I'm using will be screen-shots of a choice few (click to enlarge):

*Squeee* I love reading feedback like this, and just want to keep doing stuff people will like! My hope all along was to give people what they wanted - including me! As a long-time Blogger user, it was obvious that comments were under-utilised. As a Blogger developer though, I not only could see how much potential better commenting could have, but also how to fix it. After my time with Wave conversations, the first thing was obviously the most demanded - threading:

An artistic entry - believe me, I have a dorky smile too :D

You see, people like related sections of discussions to be next to eachother, in particular, if an author responds to a comment a few days later, ideally it'll appear right under that comment. Alternatively, if a second commenter has a particular agreement/disagreement with something said before, it's best to attach their reply to the right location. Note that we also now indicate which comments come from the author, helping their opinions stand out; additionally, comment previews and loading more comments will no longer reload the entire page - two more barriers to posting.

So, I hope you all comment more, which can then lead to posting more and overall improved content creation and discussion on the net. Many things I know are very talk-based with not much listening, which I think is a shame. While doing the twitter searches above, I was impressed at how it's moving towards conversing with others online, not just consuming their status - especially when it's people you wouldn't have met normally, but who write about what interests you. I hope to continue improving things, but while that's happening, remember to add comments on blogs you read, and for authors, reply when people share their thoughts!