Let’s change the way we comment on Facebook!
The problem with the current commenting system as it is used on Facebook as well as other online platforms is that people first share a link to an external article to their preferred social network, then start commenting on it.
This way, the discussion is kept within a data silo, only available to a few friends or members of a certain group. A discussion like this has a pretty short life cycle as it fades away into the Facebook timeline of a certain user or page. The discussion gets separated once another friends shares the item on his own — comments are not copied over, or better, referenced to the original url of the shared article.
In many cases though, this process of sharing and commenting is the only way available to users sometimes, when somebody wants to comment on an online article but the article page does not offer a commenting tool on its own (such as Disqus, Viafoura, etc.). And even if it offers a system like Disqus or alike, it’s not seamlessly integrated into the user’s social media ecosystem. Sure, you can authenticate with Facebook or Google on Disqus, but it’s a discussion platform on its own; those comments are not integrated with Facebook, you don’t get notified within Facebook when someone replies to your comment. Why not stick to what the user already uses to comment everyday anyway, which is the Facebook comment system?
Above described problematic process of sharing and commenting might work well if you just want to discuss something within a close circle of friends or a group, but it is not well-suited for public, open discussions, where you are also interested in the opinions from people with who you are not directly connected with.
The solution comes with CommentAnywhere.org! CommentAnywhere.org is a free browser extension for Firefox and Chrome that allows users to comment on any website by simply using their Facebook or VKontakte account. It’s installed with one click and sits right in the address bar of your browser, very easy and intuitive to use for any user who is already familiar with Facebook’s comment system.
5 reasons to use CommentAnywhere:
- Comment on any website, right where the content lives, even on those that do not offer a commenting tool on their pages!
- Avoid discussions in “shared item” silos or closed groups on Facebook or VK — create a much longer life cycle of online discussions!
- CommentAnywhere is omnipresent in the address bar of the browser!
- Easy to use for everyone as the commenting system is based on Facebook / VKontakte comments!
- Available for Firefox and Chrome (which makes around 87% market share)!
CommentAnywhere.org is a non-commercial offering. It’s free and open source.
Website: http://www.commentanywhere.org
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/commentanywhere.org
VKontakte: http://vk.com/cmntanywhere
Twitter: https://twitter.com/CommentAnywhere
Github: https://github.com/commentanywhere
What do you think about this approach? Taking the social media user to the original medium instead of away, in order to comment about it.
