Sciencetext Tips & Tricks

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Catching the Chat on Your Blog

September 9th, 2009 · by David Bradley >> 14 Comments

I had the hare-brained idea that because my Sciencebase.com science blog is getting fewer and fewer comments these days, that it might be worth my disabling that option altogether and letting the conversation run via Twitter and FriendFeed instead, where comments and retweets on the site’s posts still abound. I put this idea to my Twitter friends and almost universally they said – don’t do it!

@RuthSeeley quickly pointed out that, “Regardless of whether you get comments or not, I think closing comments sends a message that you don’t want them.” @laikas suggested that I not close off comments, and that I should just, “accept that it is less and discussion is diluted over several places.” Probably good advice in the web 2.0 era where some users follow a blog via the site, others via its RSS, some on FriendFeed, others on Facebook, some via Twitter and leave their comments there.

@easternblot made the important point that closing comments would not necessarily boost the conversation. “Not everyone is on Twitter, and it’s discouraging people who just want to leave one comment once,” she says, “I’ve missed many a comment on my Nature Network blog from people who don’t want to sign up *there* just for one comment.”

@wyattsgirl was one respondent who thought it might be a good idea, but suggested shifting comments to Friendfeed too. “I think that that format is somewhat better because easier to follow thread,” she says. @RandallKlopping too, thought it might not be a bad idea to disable comments and shift the discussion entirely on to the social media sphere rather than the blog.

@hacool had the most constructive idea, however, which is not simply a compromise, but a way to boost the conversation without losing anything on the blog itself. She pointed me to a plugin called ChatCatcher. As the name suggests, this plugin apparently catches chat about a particular post and treats a Twitter or identi.ca comment as if it were a trackback comment on another blog, allowing you to display those comments as a stream at the foot of your post. Sounds like the best of both worlds.

So, I installed it earlier this month and set it running…I’m writing this on the day of installation, and I’ll update once I’ve seen it in action for a couple of weeks.

14 responses so far ↓

  • David Bradley // Sep 9, 2009 at 10:15 am

    Catching the Chat on Your Blog – http://bit.ly/105EAz

  • Laika (Jacqueline) // Sep 9, 2009 at 10:20 am

    RT @sciencebase: Catching the Chat on Your Blog – http://bit.ly/105EAz well we’ll see if this 1 is catched, David ;) -I also use other tools

  • Heidi Cool // Sep 9, 2009 at 10:45 am

    RT @sciencebase: Catching the Chat on Your Blog – http://bit.ly/105EAz Capturing Tweets & other mentions linking to your blogposts

  • Heidi Cool // Sep 9, 2009 at 5:43 pm

    I hope this works as well for you as it does for me. What I’ve always liked about blog comments is that they stay there, archived in place with the actual entry. This way if someone finds one of my posts 8 months from now they can see the reactions as well.

    I think all of us have seen our comments dwindle as people react to our stories on Twitter, Friendfeed and elsewhere. Typically those comments get lost in the ether. They’re indexed and can be found but they’re not tied to the page. ChatCatcher really helps with that. (Of course we also have conversations scattered across Facebook, Friendfeed and elsewhere, but this is a start.

    If I find a blog post is particularly worthwhile I’ll now comment on the post first, then reTweet the link. This way I get to share the info, and give people more than 140 characters worth of thought on why I found it informative. If we can get more people to follow this tactic perhaps we’ll be able to start pushing more of our conversations back to the blog as well. – @hacool

  • David Bradley // Sep 9, 2009 at 5:46 pm

    Thanks again for the suggestion! Fingers crossed and all that. That commenting then retweeting is one of the tactics I’ve used occasionally too. Hopefully, it’s a win-win strategy. Maybe I should blog about that too ;-)

  • Heidi Cool // Sep 9, 2009 at 5:52 pm

    Yes, that would be a good topic for another post. I just reTweeted your link as well so hopefully we’ll see that show up in your comments shortly. There might be a bit of a time delay before they appear, I don’t recall how long it takes.

  • materialsdave // Sep 10, 2009 at 7:47 am

    Also, you could consider a commenting system plugin like Disqus (http://www.disqus.net) or JS-Kit Echo (http://js-kit.com/). These pull in live results from Twitter, FriendFeed, etc. as they appear in a live stream at the bottom of your post.

    (I’ll check out ChatCatcher.)

  • Captain Skellett // Sep 10, 2009 at 7:59 am

    Ooh, cool app. Most of my readers aren’t following me on Twitter yet, but will definately keep this one in mind. Thanks Heidi and David (btw, found this post on twitter) :P

  • David Bradley // Sep 10, 2009 at 8:17 am

    @Captain Skellet Heh, the irony

    @MaterialsDave Yeah, I should look into Disqus too, I may be mistaken but I thought that system took your comments offsite…

  • David Bradley // Sep 10, 2009 at 9:05 am

    Tried to install Disqus on this blog, but the comment import process stalled. Now investigating Automattic’s Intense Debate as an alternative…

  • David Bradley // Sep 10, 2009 at 10:11 am

    Okay. Trying out Intense Debate (Disqus failed to import). ChatCatcher caused php script issue on this site although it’s working properly on Sciencebase.com

  • Michael Koenig // Sep 10, 2009 at 4:14 pm

    How's everything coming along with IntenseDebate? I checked and it looks like your import has completed successfully. Please let me know you have any questions, I'm happy to help.

    Thanks for giving ID a try!

  • David Bradley // Sep 10, 2009 at 6:33 pm

    @Michael Periodically seeing the error message below. I assumed it was a conflicting plugin, but I’ve disabled all plugins associated with commenting:

    “This website uses IntenseDebate comments, but they are not currently loaded because either your browser doesn’t support JavaScript, or they didn’t load fast enough.”

  • David Bradley // Sep 14, 2009 at 4:49 pm

    Okay. This just ain’t working out. Aside from the fact that it didn’t suddenly attract new commenters, it seems that almost always it’s timing out. If Michael comes up with a solution, I may reactivate, but for now IntenseDebate is off and we’re running our theme’s standard comments form.

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