I was one of the developers of Huffington Post's homegrown comment system before the decision was made to shut it down early this year. It was a decision that w

I was one of the developers of Huffington Post's homegrown comment system before the decision was made to shut it down early this year. It was a decision that wasn't taken lightly, as "social news" was how the site began (rather presciently), and there was still a very real online community for whom our comments section was really meaningful. We looked at many ways to preserve it, such as real names, interface innovations, better algorithms for surfacing the best comments, personalization features, and so forth. At the end of the day, it just didn't make business sense to keep it going. Along with all of the positive discussion that went on in the forums, there was also a lot of negativity that frankly didn't jive with the editorial voice of the site. And it's surprisingly expensive it is to run a homegrown comment system of that size. It was sad to see the comments go, as an avid commenter myself and as someone who had put a lot of energy into developing the software. But I came to realize that there's no fundamental logical reason a company that specializes in content production should also provide a forum for commentary. This is especially so with the rise of social networks and news aggregators. Maybe one day, a content producer will find a way to make comments a part of their core business, but until then, a lot of firms are coming to the same conclusion.