Earlier this month Facebook rolled out its latest social plugin for comments allowing you to integrate its commenting system with your website. Through this plugin visitors to your website can leave comments using their Facebook profile or Facebook Page admin profile.
Everything is more or less similar to the comment system within Facebook, you can like individual comments or reply to specific comments. But thats something that other third-party commenting systems like Disqus also provide...so whats the big deal if Facebook has come with a similar system?
For starters, the name 'Facebook' does half the job, but in this scenario it seems that Facebook has done half the job before rolling out their commenting system. No doubt that it has its advantages, but it has some shortcomings too.
But before we get there, lets have a look at what we 'like' in this latest 'social' plugin introduced by Facebook:
Likes
- You do not need technical knowledge to be able to integrate this system with your website...a single line of code and you are good to go.
- You can comment on other websites using either your Facebook profile or Facebook Page admin profile (aka work profile).
- When users leave comments on your website they have to use their real names...which drastically reduces the possibility spams and increases the quality of comments.
- The comments displayed are based on 'social relevance', i.e. most relevant comments by friends or friends of friends are displayed on the top. Comments with most likes and active threads are also considered to be relevant.
- Whenever a user leaves a comment, he/she can choose to have that comment displayed on their wall, which will be visible on their friend's news feed with the link to your site, thereby increasing the horizon and reach of your site.
- When this comment is displayed in the news feed on Facebook, others can continue the discussion within Facebook by commenting further, which will be automatically updated on your site as well. So, whether a comment has been made on your site or inside Facebook...it will be displayed in both places; this includes likes and replies as well.
- Users also receive notifications on the posts/comments that they've commented on (within Facebook or host site) and on clicking on that notification it brings the user to your site.
Dislikes
- One of the biggest disadvantage is that user can only use Facebook, Yahoo and AOL profiles to be able to comment through this system. No Twitter and no Google.
- Many people prefer to be anonymous while sharing their opinions online, which will not be a possibility here.
- Most of Facebook users prefer using it for personal use and are not very comfortable with the idea of using it professionally.
- There have been many complaints that this system makes your website slower and is a little buggy at the moment.
- Another major disadvantage is that Facebook's social plugin for comments does not allow you to back up all the comments on your site. So if tomorrow Facebook decides that its not quite working out...then you can say goodbye to your comments archive.
- Many workplaces block Facebook, so users working in those offices will be an outlaw on your website; not to forget the countries that do not have Facebook.
- Many people have SEO concerns as well, since the comments are on Facebook and the host site.
- Users using their Yahoo IDs to comment do have the privilege of their profile picture (avatar) being displayed with their comment, which is kinda discouraging and downgrades the ones commenting through other IDs.
TechCrunch has started using this latest comment system, and they seem to be quite satisfied with it...although they are still not sure if they will be sticking with it.
There are a lot of mixed emotions about this latest introduction by Facebook, some call boom while some perceive it to be Facebook's another strategy to take over the world wide web. Either ways, for now it does not have anything extraordinary to offer, specially when compared with other popular third-party commenting system; provided Facebook overhauls the plugin. What do you think?
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You list this as a con: "Many people prefer to be anonymous while sharing their opinions online, which will not be a possibility here."
I consider that a huge pro. Making people accountable for what they say online can dramatically decrease bullying, spam and trolls.
Your point is absolutely valid Matt, that's why its a pro as well, since it increases the quality of comments and brings authenticity. But many a times users prefer to pose their opinions anonymously.