7 ms·

Facebook launches overhauled comment system

57 points by siddhant 16y ago

trotsky 16y ago
Great, trading one slow loading invasive comment system that my plugins block (disqus) for another slow loading invasive comment system that my plugins already block. Nothing like progress. Widget block: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hgiihiookhijpbhaflohognbhmamdnol https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hgiihiookhijpbhafl... Disconnect: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/jeoacafpbcihiomhlakheieifhpjdfeo https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/jeoacafpbcihiomhla...
yanw 16y ago
But I'm already invested in my Disqus account and I prefer their pseudo-anonymity approach, also I don't have yahoo nor facebook accounts.
- fedd 16y ago
  so disqus is unneeded now? now they may ditch wordpress and move entirely to facebook
bloodcarter 16y ago
I feel really bad about this. I'll explain. Every person has different "social roles" in real life (for friends, business associates, hobby, etc.). But I have only one FB account. With single avatar pic. Imagine leaving a comment on some business related website using this system while I have FB avatar of me on some crazy college drunk party. When I'm socializing on FB website only that's OK, but when you try to go out, that's a big problem. We need a better way to manage our social roles.
- beaumartinez 16y ago
  Interpersonal relationships are not just "friend" or "not friend", it's far more complicated than that: I worked with a. I went to college with p. I'm best friends with x. I know z. IIRC the clear distinctions between unrelated friend groups is one of Diaspora's big selling points.
  - michaelchisari 16y ago
    IIRC the clear distinctions between unrelated friend groups is one of Diaspora's big selling points. A feature that Appleseed has had since around 2007. ;) Except we call them friends "Circles", not "Aspects".
- r00fus 16y ago
  If FB comments catch on, Facebook better expect a wave of non-real personas. It's not hard to make/maintain a fake persona. Most of my personal details on FB are not only hidden, but false. Perhaps this is the strategy to boost their numbers? (Ill advised, I think, but whatever)
  - Rariel 16y ago
    I was thinking about this too. But it seems like FB might actually like that, fluff up their user numbers a bit...
BvS 16y ago
Seems like the comments can not be indexed by Google so it seems bad if you want to the comments to help with your SEO efforts.
- riffer 16y ago
  That will be the best thing that's happened to blog comments in 5 or 6 years.
JohnTitus 16y ago
The "advantage" FB has is that comments on a 3rd party site get posted to your FB page, and replies to those comments on FB go back to the 3rd party page. I'm not sure that's really that big of an advantage - some may consider it a disadvantage..
- estel 16y ago
  The advantage would be to drive more traffic and discussion to the parent site. This is also opt-outable.
Rariel 16y ago
I'm very much against this. Facebook does not need a piece of every aspect of our online life. I much prefer Disqus because 1) they aren't facebook and 2) they are way more useful in terms of commenting because it allows you to keep certain opinions off of facebook. Facebook already has a big brother vibe to it--a feeling echoed by many others I know--why do they keep going further with this sort of thing?
- stanleydrew 16y ago
  Because they need to make more money? Their vision has been to own identity on the web for quite a while. This is just one more small step in that direction, the big previous step being Facebook Connect itself.
jonknee 16y ago
My /etc/hosts file already blocks Facebook's widgets, so I don't see anything in the comments section on TechCrunch. That's a feature and improvement as far as I'm concerned. TechCrunch kind of hinted at it, but I will never use Facebook to leave a comment on a website (or log-into a site for that matter). I keep my Facebook account separate from everything because I don't trust Zuck whatsoever. Update: in addition to blocking in /etc/hosts, I run Facebook Disconnect in Chrome which gets rid of all those Like buttons and other annoyances that run on the main Facebook domain and can't be blocked in /etc/hosts without also blocking your access to Facebook directly. It's a fantastic extension. https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ejpepffjfmamnambagiibghpglaidiec https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ejpepffjfmamnambag...
- mithaler 16y ago
  I run Facebook Disconnect too, and it also caused the comments to fail to load on the TechCrunch article, in case you were wondering.
  - jonknee 16y ago
    I block connect.facebook.com in /etc/hosts so the comments don't load in any browser for me as the request 404s, Facebook Disconnect is just a bonus.
- r00fus 16y ago
  There's also facebookblocker and Defacer for Safari: http://extensions.apple.com/#social-networking http://extensions.apple.com/#social-networking
  - Terretta 16y ago
    Incognito stops Facebook on third party sites as well as Google AdSense and Google Analytics: http://www.orbicule.com/incognito/ http://www.orbicule.com/incognito/ It killed the Facebook comments section on this TechCrunch article too.
r00fus 16y ago
Lack of pseudonyms is going to be a real stumbling block for this. When I'm conversing with a real person (ie, on Facebook, Twitter or IM) then I'm ok using my real name because there are privacy controls. When I'm discussing things on HN or TechCrunch, I don't want my opinions being misconstrued out of context... given this society's litigious nature, I think FB comments are not going to take over Disqus/IntenseDebate's market, though they might carve out a nice niche.
michaelchisari 16y ago
When building out Appleseed, I decided on a principle early on that's important for a sense of social... well, not privacy, that's not the right word. Segmentation, more like it. But first, humans rely on segmentation. I want to know that if I'm hanging out in a bar with a bunch of friends, I can talk a certain way that I would never talk around my parents or my extended family. If a member of that social group walks into the bar, it's awkward, but on some level, they opened that pandora's box, by encroaching on my social space. Facebook doesn't seem to understand that, preferring instead to just dump everything into one box labelled "Social!" and forgetting that you interact with your friends different from your family, your coworkers, etc. So for Appleseed, the principle I'm focusing on is that, when you report to your friends, you report on contexts, not actions. So, when you upload a photo, or post a journal entry, or a status update, you're creating context, and the appropriate friends are notified of that context. However, when you comment on that context, you are taking an action. The recipients of that context are notified, but your friends are not (unless they're already mutual friends of the context owner). In other words, Alice posts a journal entry to her College Buddies friends circle. Bob comments on that journal entry. Alice's College Buddies friends circle is notified of Bob's comment, but Bob's friends are not notified unless they are also one of Alice's College Buddies. This isn't perfect, someone so inclined can still search for your comments and find them, provided the privacy settings are open enough. But let's as least make stalking require an extra action, instead of doing it for the user.
- bjtitus 16y ago
  I agree 100% with your statements except that I think Facebook does understand this. After all, isn't this exactly what the Lists/Groups feature does (albeit, un-intuitively)? I believe that Facebook knows this is a concern and this is why they relaunched the Groups feature recently. It's a hard problem to solve from a UX perspective. Most normal users would be confused by segregating things out even if there was an easy UI solution for creating/publishing to these groups. Look to their recent acquisition of Beluga to get a sense of where this is going. They are obviously interested in moving into the group messaging space. Lets not fool ourselves, though. Facebook has some vested interest in making things more public so that advertisers and media outlets can use them without issue.
Newky 16y ago
I think there is a greasemonkey script in the making to disable the defaulting of the post on facebook tickbox. In the rare occasion my non-tech friends want to see comments I made on something, I think I can manage to tick the box.
dstein 16y ago
When you think about it from the perspective of big sites like TechCrunch, requiring that people use their true Facebook identity would virtually eliminate nasty comments overnight. When you're using your true identity people will generally behave a lot better. If that was the only motive behind Facebook comments I could easily get on board with that, but inevitably Facebook will find deviant and lucrative purposes for the information they gather.
- sorbus 16y ago
  > When you're using your true identity people will generally behave a lot better. Because obviously no one has fake facebook accounts, and the barrier of creating an account with a plausible sounding name in order to troll people is a high enough barrier of entry to stop trolls. And no one is ever mean to other people in situations where their real name is known. I admit to being a bit envious of whatever fantasy world you live in.
  - dstein 16y ago
    Sure, trolls will be trolls. But I'd make a bet that average Joe Sixpack might just get tired of logging out of Facebook to log back in with his troll account just so he can post a hit-and-run nasty comment. It's probably enough of a barrier to make an impact.
    - innes 16y ago
      It may discourage trolling, but I expect it will also mean 90% of comments are made by people who are oblivious that they're trolling with their real identity, people who dont care that they're trolling WTRI, people with big egos, and of course 'social media' people promoting their 'personal brand'.
- r00fus 16y ago
  > When you think about it from the perspective of big sites like TechCrunch, requiring that people use their true Facebook identity would virtually eliminate nasty comments overnight. Quite possibly by decimating the comment boards. The chilling effect of potentially having your FB history being subpoenaed is quite strong. Does this go along with AOL's new business model?
kmfrk 16y ago
Can someone explain the appeal of using this over something with support for pseudonyms?
- notahacker 16y ago
  It should result in a moderate reduction in trolling. Mainly it's the same appeal as every other Facebook widget - people commenting on your site must spam all their friends' newsfeeds with your article. This makes it ideal for a personal blog that you actually do want some of your friends to comment on, ideal for a mass media site driven by pageviews, and hopeless for niche enthusiast sites trying to promote debate. The other "advantage" claimed by TC - that Facebookers can contribute directly to the comment thread without even visiting the article page never mind reading it - sounds like it has pretty dubious value.
  - joebadmo 16y ago
    I wonder about the reduction in trolling, too, considering a lot of the comments I've seen on Facebook. I always thought identification would reduce bad behavior, but anecdotally I've found that not to be the case.
gokhan 16y ago
To understand the scene on comments, here's a This Week in Startups episode with Daniel Ha, founder of Disqus. http://thisweekin.com/thisweekin-startups/this-week-in-startups-116-with-daniel-ha-founder-of-disqus/ http://thisweekin.com/thisweekin-startups/this-week-in-start... Starts at 00:15:00
- riffer 16y ago
  And at 30:15 he talks about the potential implications of Facebook entering the comments space. His point is that it validates the market.
jamesjyu 16y ago
I don't know about everyone else, but this is the first time in a while where TC comments are actually readable, and are not troll-ridden. This is a good thing.
- minalecs 16y ago
  I actually think it has made the discourse worse, in that we are getting only the cookie cutter replies, of nice article and good job type comments. As much as everyone hates trolls, they do bring up good point sometimes regardless if you agree or disagree with them.
  - Rariel 16y ago
    Trolls often say things that people are too scared to say under a real name OR a well known user name. I never understood the problem with just ignoring trolls or laughing at them. I mostly laugh.
pessimist 16y ago
Appear to be uncrawlable by Google/Bing - the closing of the web accelerates, sadly with the full consent and cooperation of users and websites.
mrchess 16y ago
This will propagate a new wave of facebook trolls who will create accounts with specific demographics and make vulgar comments in hopes to 1) troll, and 2) make said demographic look bad. Problem is now we can't even tell if they are real or not!
- hackinthebochs 16y ago
  I'm sure it's easy to do some friend graph analysis to determine a ranking similar to pagerank for comments. The troll accounts would sink to the bottom like a rock.
  - gloob 16y ago
    SEO.
blocke 16y ago
Blocking Facebook in Adblock is the gift that keeps on giving. No need to resort to an additional mod when all you need to do is toss the following in Adblock: ||facebook.com/ ||facebook.net/ ||fbcdn.com/ ||fbcdn.net/
JonnieCache 16y ago
What's needed is a browser extension that blocks the facebook comments iframe from reading my facebook session. I currently block their various tracking widgets using the widget block extension, which prevents them from ever being loaded, as they are worthless. But this way I won't ever be able to see the facebook comments at all, which will be aggravating if they become as common as disqus for example. Regrettably that isn't unlikely. So we need a way of appearing to not have a facebook session when displaying the facebook comments widget on other sites, but not interfering with facebook proper.
- Terretta 16y ago
  Incognito protects your privacy by blocking Google Adsense and Google Analytics on non-Google pages. In addition, it allows you to optionally block Facebook content on third-party websites as well as embedded YouTube movies outside of the YouTube website. http://www.orbicule.com/incognito/ http://www.orbicule.com/incognito/ It blocked the comments on this TechCrunch article for me, and it blocks "Like" buttons everywhere for me too.
robryan 16y ago
What's so terrible about the comment system that comes with wordpress?
- rkudeshi 16y ago
  It doesn't allow for surfacing popular/controversial comments. It keeps everything chronological, which is a good reference, but encourages people to post quickly, without considerable thought. Would you want Hacker News comment threads ordered chronologically? Exactly.
lowglow 16y ago
So what are Disqus's plans now?
- danielha 16y ago
  Hasn't changed! We've known about this (as well as the launch today) and aren't making any specific plans based on TC's testing of FBComments.
michuk 16y ago
Facebook Comments won't touch the ID/Echo/Disqus market share on dominant websites and popular blogs, but it will totally take over the long tail. With no comment karma or other means of emphasizing the important content, the new Facebook comments plugin is going to totally kill commenting on popular websites like TechCrunch (which, amazingly, is testing it right now. The first post got >1000 comments. With such amounts it's just a lot of noise. If you are big, do it like they do it on Slashdot or don't do it at all! On the other hand, it can be a real killer feature for small sites that normally would have zero or very few comments, with all interactions moving to Facebooks and Twitters or the world. Now with Facebook Comments, it can stay on Facebook and you don't care as you're still getting your comments back on your blog and the more people share it and comment on it, the bigger chance you get to attract new readers. Amazing opportunity!

57 points by siddhant 16y ago

Great, trading one slow loading invasive comment system that my plugins block (disqus) for another slow loading invasive comment system that my plugins already block. Nothing like progress. Widget block: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hgiihiookhijpbhaflohognbhmamdnol https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hgiihiookhijpbhafl... Disconnect: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/jeoacafpbcihiomhlakheieifhpjdfeo https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/jeoacafpbcihiomhla...

yanw 16y ago

But I'm already invested in my Disqus account and I prefer their pseudo-anonymity approach, also I don't have yahoo nor facebook accounts.

fedd 16y ago
so disqus is unneeded now? now they may ditch wordpress and move entirely to facebook

bloodcarter 16y ago

I feel really bad about this. I'll explain. Every person has different "social roles" in real life (for friends, business associates, hobby, etc.). But I have only one FB account. With single avatar pic. Imagine leaving a comment on some business related website using this system while I have FB avatar of me on some crazy college drunk party. When I'm socializing on FB website only that's OK, but when you try to go out, that's a big problem. We need a better way to manage our social roles.

beaumartinez 16y ago
Interpersonal relationships are not just "friend" or "not friend", it's far more complicated than that: I worked with a. I went to college with p. I'm best friends with x. I know z. IIRC the clear distinctions between unrelated friend groups is one of Diaspora's big selling points.
- michaelchisari 16y ago
  IIRC the clear distinctions between unrelated friend groups is one of Diaspora's big selling points. A feature that Appleseed has had since around 2007. ;) Except we call them friends "Circles", not "Aspects".
r00fus 16y ago
If FB comments catch on, Facebook better expect a wave of non-real personas. It's not hard to make/maintain a fake persona. Most of my personal details on FB are not only hidden, but false. Perhaps this is the strategy to boost their numbers? (Ill advised, I think, but whatever)
- Rariel 16y ago
  I was thinking about this too. But it seems like FB might actually like that, fluff up their user numbers a bit...

BvS 16y ago

Seems like the comments can not be indexed by Google so it seems bad if you want to the comments to help with your SEO efforts.

riffer 16y ago
That will be the best thing that's happened to blog comments in 5 or 6 years.

JohnTitus 16y ago

The "advantage" FB has is that comments on a 3rd party site get posted to your FB page, and replies to those comments on FB go back to the 3rd party page. I'm not sure that's really that big of an advantage - some may consider it a disadvantage..

estel 16y ago
The advantage would be to drive more traffic and discussion to the parent site. This is also opt-outable.

Rariel 16y ago

I'm very much against this. Facebook does not need a piece of every aspect of our online life. I much prefer Disqus because 1) they aren't facebook and 2) they are way more useful in terms of commenting because it allows you to keep certain opinions off of facebook. Facebook already has a big brother vibe to it--a feeling echoed by many others I know--why do they keep going further with this sort of thing?

stanleydrew 16y ago
Because they need to make more money? Their vision has been to own identity on the web for quite a while. This is just one more small step in that direction, the big previous step being Facebook Connect itself.

jonknee 16y ago

My /etc/hosts file already blocks Facebook's widgets, so I don't see anything in the comments section on TechCrunch. That's a feature and improvement as far as I'm concerned. TechCrunch kind of hinted at it, but I will never use Facebook to leave a comment on a website (or log-into a site for that matter). I keep my Facebook account separate from everything because I don't trust Zuck whatsoever. Update: in addition to blocking in /etc/hosts, I run Facebook Disconnect in Chrome which gets rid of all those Like buttons and other annoyances that run on the main Facebook domain and can't be blocked in /etc/hosts without also blocking your access to Facebook directly. It's a fantastic extension. https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ejpepffjfmamnambagiibghpglaidiec https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ejpepffjfmamnambag...

mithaler 16y ago
I run Facebook Disconnect too, and it also caused the comments to fail to load on the TechCrunch article, in case you were wondering.
- jonknee 16y ago
  I block connect.facebook.com in /etc/hosts so the comments don't load in any browser for me as the request 404s, Facebook Disconnect is just a bonus.
r00fus 16y ago
There's also facebookblocker and Defacer for Safari: http://extensions.apple.com/#social-networking http://extensions.apple.com/#social-networking
- Terretta 16y ago
  Incognito stops Facebook on third party sites as well as Google AdSense and Google Analytics: http://www.orbicule.com/incognito/ http://www.orbicule.com/incognito/ It killed the Facebook comments section on this TechCrunch article too.

r00fus 16y ago

Lack of pseudonyms is going to be a real stumbling block for this. When I'm conversing with a real person (ie, on Facebook, Twitter or IM) then I'm ok using my real name because there are privacy controls. When I'm discussing things on HN or TechCrunch, I don't want my opinions being misconstrued out of context... given this society's litigious nature, I think FB comments are not going to take over Disqus/IntenseDebate's market, though they might carve out a nice niche.

michaelchisari 16y ago

When building out Appleseed, I decided on a principle early on that's important for a sense of social... well, not privacy, that's not the right word. Segmentation, more like it. But first, humans rely on segmentation. I want to know that if I'm hanging out in a bar with a bunch of friends, I can talk a certain way that I would never talk around my parents or my extended family. If a member of that social group walks into the bar, it's awkward, but on some level, they opened that pandora's box, by encroaching on my social space. Facebook doesn't seem to understand that, preferring instead to just dump everything into one box labelled "Social!" and forgetting that you interact with your friends different from your family, your coworkers, etc. So for Appleseed, the principle I'm focusing on is that, when you report to your friends, you report on contexts, not actions. So, when you upload a photo, or post a journal entry, or a status update, you're creating context, and the appropriate friends are notified of that context. However, when you comment on that context, you are taking an action. The recipients of that context are notified, but your friends are not (unless they're already mutual friends of the context owner). In other words, Alice posts a journal entry to her College Buddies friends circle. Bob comments on that journal entry. Alice's College Buddies friends circle is notified of Bob's comment, but Bob's friends are not notified unless they are also one of Alice's College Buddies. This isn't perfect, someone so inclined can still search for your comments and find them, provided the privacy settings are open enough. But let's as least make stalking require an extra action, instead of doing it for the user.

bjtitus 16y ago
I agree 100% with your statements except that I think Facebook does understand this. After all, isn't this exactly what the Lists/Groups feature does (albeit, un-intuitively)? I believe that Facebook knows this is a concern and this is why they relaunched the Groups feature recently. It's a hard problem to solve from a UX perspective. Most normal users would be confused by segregating things out even if there was an easy UI solution for creating/publishing to these groups. Look to their recent acquisition of Beluga to get a sense of where this is going. They are obviously interested in moving into the group messaging space. Lets not fool ourselves, though. Facebook has some vested interest in making things more public so that advertisers and media outlets can use them without issue.

Newky 16y ago

I think there is a greasemonkey script in the making to disable the defaulting of the post on facebook tickbox. In the rare occasion my non-tech friends want to see comments I made on something, I think I can manage to tick the box.

dstein 16y ago

When you think about it from the perspective of big sites like TechCrunch, requiring that people use their true Facebook identity would virtually eliminate nasty comments overnight. When you're using your true identity people will generally behave a lot better. If that was the only motive behind Facebook comments I could easily get on board with that, but inevitably Facebook will find deviant and lucrative purposes for the information they gather.

sorbus 16y ago
> When you're using your true identity people will generally behave a lot better. Because obviously no one has fake facebook accounts, and the barrier of creating an account with a plausible sounding name in order to troll people is a high enough barrier of entry to stop trolls. And no one is ever mean to other people in situations where their real name is known. I admit to being a bit envious of whatever fantasy world you live in.
- dstein 16y ago
  Sure, trolls will be trolls. But I'd make a bet that average Joe Sixpack might just get tired of logging out of Facebook to log back in with his troll account just so he can post a hit-and-run nasty comment. It's probably enough of a barrier to make an impact.
  - innes 16y ago
    It may discourage trolling, but I expect it will also mean 90% of comments are made by people who are oblivious that they're trolling with their real identity, people who dont care that they're trolling WTRI, people with big egos, and of course 'social media' people promoting their 'personal brand'.
r00fus 16y ago
> When you think about it from the perspective of big sites like TechCrunch, requiring that people use their true Facebook identity would virtually eliminate nasty comments overnight. Quite possibly by decimating the comment boards. The chilling effect of potentially having your FB history being subpoenaed is quite strong. Does this go along with AOL's new business model?

kmfrk 16y ago

Can someone explain the appeal of using this over something with support for pseudonyms?

notahacker 16y ago
It should result in a moderate reduction in trolling. Mainly it's the same appeal as every other Facebook widget - people commenting on your site must spam all their friends' newsfeeds with your article. This makes it ideal for a personal blog that you actually do want some of your friends to comment on, ideal for a mass media site driven by pageviews, and hopeless for niche enthusiast sites trying to promote debate. The other "advantage" claimed by TC - that Facebookers can contribute directly to the comment thread without even visiting the article page never mind reading it - sounds like it has pretty dubious value.
- joebadmo 16y ago
  I wonder about the reduction in trolling, too, considering a lot of the comments I've seen on Facebook. I always thought identification would reduce bad behavior, but anecdotally I've found that not to be the case.

gokhan 16y ago

To understand the scene on comments, here's a This Week in Startups episode with Daniel Ha, founder of Disqus. http://thisweekin.com/thisweekin-startups/this-week-in-startups-116-with-daniel-ha-founder-of-disqus/ http://thisweekin.com/thisweekin-startups/this-week-in-start... Starts at 00:15:00

riffer 16y ago
And at 30:15 he talks about the potential implications of Facebook entering the comments space. His point is that it validates the market.

jamesjyu 16y ago

I don't know about everyone else, but this is the first time in a while where TC comments are actually readable, and are not troll-ridden. This is a good thing.

minalecs 16y ago
I actually think it has made the discourse worse, in that we are getting only the cookie cutter replies, of nice article and good job type comments. As much as everyone hates trolls, they do bring up good point sometimes regardless if you agree or disagree with them.
- Rariel 16y ago
  Trolls often say things that people are too scared to say under a real name OR a well known user name. I never understood the problem with just ignoring trolls or laughing at them. I mostly laugh.

pessimist 16y ago

Appear to be uncrawlable by Google/Bing - the closing of the web accelerates, sadly with the full consent and cooperation of users and websites.

mrchess 16y ago

This will propagate a new wave of facebook trolls who will create accounts with specific demographics and make vulgar comments in hopes to 1) troll, and 2) make said demographic look bad. Problem is now we can't even tell if they are real or not!

hackinthebochs 16y ago
I'm sure it's easy to do some friend graph analysis to determine a ranking similar to pagerank for comments. The troll accounts would sink to the bottom like a rock.
- gloob 16y ago
  SEO.

blocke 16y ago

Blocking Facebook in Adblock is the gift that keeps on giving. No need to resort to an additional mod when all you need to do is toss the following in Adblock: ||facebook.com/ ||facebook.net/ ||fbcdn.com/ ||fbcdn.net/

JonnieCache 16y ago

What's needed is a browser extension that blocks the facebook comments iframe from reading my facebook session. I currently block their various tracking widgets using the widget block extension, which prevents them from ever being loaded, as they are worthless. But this way I won't ever be able to see the facebook comments at all, which will be aggravating if they become as common as disqus for example. Regrettably that isn't unlikely. So we need a way of appearing to not have a facebook session when displaying the facebook comments widget on other sites, but not interfering with facebook proper.

Terretta 16y ago
Incognito protects your privacy by blocking Google Adsense and Google Analytics on non-Google pages. In addition, it allows you to optionally block Facebook content on third-party websites as well as embedded YouTube movies outside of the YouTube website. http://www.orbicule.com/incognito/ http://www.orbicule.com/incognito/ It blocked the comments on this TechCrunch article for me, and it blocks "Like" buttons everywhere for me too.

robryan 16y ago

What's so terrible about the comment system that comes with wordpress?

rkudeshi 16y ago
It doesn't allow for surfacing popular/controversial comments. It keeps everything chronological, which is a good reference, but encourages people to post quickly, without considerable thought. Would you want Hacker News comment threads ordered chronologically? Exactly.

lowglow 16y ago

So what are Disqus's plans now?

danielha 16y ago
Hasn't changed! We've known about this (as well as the launch today) and aren't making any specific plans based on TC's testing of FBComments.

michuk 16y ago

Facebook Comments won't touch the ID/Echo/Disqus market share on dominant websites and popular blogs, but it will totally take over the long tail. With no comment karma or other means of emphasizing the important content, the new Facebook comments plugin is going to totally kill commenting on popular websites like TechCrunch (which, amazingly, is testing it right now. The first post got >1000 comments. With such amounts it's just a lot of noise. If you are big, do it like they do it on Slashdot or don't do it at all! On the other hand, it can be a real killer feature for small sites that normally would have zero or very few comments, with all interactions moving to Facebooks and Twitters or the world. Now with Facebook Comments, it can stay on Facebook and you don't care as you're still getting your comments back on your blog and the more people share it and comment on it, the bigger chance you get to attract new readers. Amazing opportunity!