Cross Posting With A Single Comment Thread

You may have noticed that Business Insider cross posts a lot of the stuff that I write here. They are not the only online publication that does that but they are the most active one.

Today they cross posted yesterday's MBA Mondays post. But if you click through to that last link, you'll see that the comment thread (ie the discussion) that is running at the end of the Business Insider post is the same comment thread that runs at the end of the same post here at AVC.

I think this is the future. I'd like to see my content run everywhere that there is an audience that is interested in it. But I don't want to have to participate in multiple discussions about it. Using the same comment thread solves that problem.

Business Insider is using a simple hack to put the Disqus comment thread at the end of their cross post. But that won't be required for too much longer. I expect Disqus and any other serious comment system to allow this "multiple cross posts, one thread" approach to work simply and easily.

So if you want to cross post anything you read here, please do that. But also please bring the discussion with you. I appreciate it and our community will too.

#Weblogs

Comments (Archived):

  1. andrewwatson

    that is fantastic! it’s hard to stay current on great discussion and / or flame wars if they sprout up all over the internet. ๐Ÿ™‚

  2. djhomeless1

    That’s a great feature Fred. One of the things we do quite well at my startup, nsyght.com is merge discussions from Facebook and Twitter about things you post.There is a lot of discussion going on at blogs, but there is even more discussion reverberating around Facebook and Twitter. Would be interesting to see who gets there first.

  3. Julien

    Salmon, a protocol created by a few Google engineers allows to do that pretty well. Of course it’s very early stage, but I believe the Disqus guys should look at it!http://www.salmon-protocol.org/It's in the same vein as PubSubHubbub and I believed these protocols are the future of the web ๐Ÿ™‚ But you know that, don’t you? (Daniel and team, if you guys want to PubSubHubbub-ize your feeds, let me know, we (superfeedr can help!)

    1. Mark Essel

      Yeah Daniel’s aware Julien.Pubsubhubbub (and rsscloud) have brought the observer pattern of real time status of twitter to the net. Salmon will do the same for real time comments/reactions/sentiment(filtering!)

  4. Shripriya

    This is great. But to really solve the problem of multiple comment threads, Disqus has to find a way to work with Facebook. There are tons of comments there that are in their own silo and that’s just… disappointing.I know there are issues and difficulties and Facebook and whether users want their comments public, but it’s all solvable. And it’s in Disqus’ best interest to solve it fast.

    1. andyswan

      I’d like to cast my vote in opposition. Facebook can keep its comments in silo. Damn them and their parasitic attack on the Internet.

      1. Mark Essel

        Manual reader filters by comment service source, or by community votes might solve that issue. Friendfeed was pretty cool about hiding services. Hopefully google buzz will get there.

    2. fredwilson

      You are right that facebook and twitter are part of the issue. Fortunately I don’t get any comments/discussion on facebook. Probably becuase I don’t use facebook other than to pump content into it automatically

      1. Shripriya

        I do use Facebook, but for my blog, all it does is pull in the feed. I even changed it to be the partial feed and put a footer to “comment on the blog” :), but there are still posts where I have more comments on Facebook than I do on my blog. This is not a problem you’d face – not only because of your Facebook usage, but also because of the number of comments you get here – but is likely closer to the norm for most users.

        1. Aaron Klein

          I agree. I always get more comments on Facebook than via Disqus, without exception. Annoying because Disqus promotes conversation and Facebook definitely doesn’t.

  5. andyswan

    There should be an asterisk or something next to the comment-refugees from other, less distinguished sites. Perhaps a filter and an opt-out.I don’t post on AVC for the amusement of the freeloaders on Business Insider.

    1. onsip

      It is an interesting feature, but this is a good point too. I can see several readers not wanting to participate in conversations without control of where it’s posted! Opt-outs are usually a good idea.

      1. andyswan

        Exactly.My comments are currency with value. If I didn’t believe that, I wouldn’t write them.I spend them on the content, and at the locations that I deem worthy.

        1. Donna Brewington White

          Andy — your comments ARE currency with value. I certainly enjoy them. But, what I want to know is how oftentimes your comment is at the very top even if others comment earlier than you? For me, it’s a good thing. Makes you easier to find.

          1. andyswan

            I believe AVC has by default to sort the comments by their level of win. “Popular now” is the default choice above the comments. If you’d like to see me put in my proper chronological place, you can change it ๐Ÿ™‚

          2. Donna Brewington White

            Nope, I say let the best man win! (Funny, I went back to edit my comment and when I saved the edit, saw you’d already responded.)

          3. Mark Essel

            I dig the like filtering, and chronological. Putting data sorting in the users hands is a big win for disqus, but it must cost them somehow (javascript functionality support). How many users do you think change the order. I did once, now I leave it popular now.

        2. CJ

          And they’re probably worth about $0.008333… :-)http://andyswan.com/blog/20…

    2. Mark Essel

      Hah, so rude to new folks.We should welcome the business insider members. They have to put up with our comments all over their news site for cross posts. Shared comments goes both ways. A little cross pollinating won’t kill us.My only concern, are the rest of their posts any good?If Fred was cross syndicating to read write web that’d be pretty awesome.

      1. fredwilson

        They (RWW) can cross post anything I write. Anyone can. That is what my CC license says

    3. brmore

      Love the idea, with +1 for the opt out (extended a bit). Extended rules: 1) as the author of the original content you should be able to opt in/out a specific article and 2) as a comment author I should be able to opt in/out a specific comment.

      1. ShanaC

        At some point, I hope you realize that is unrealistic. Imagine you opt out, but the reply opts in? How does that look to a reader?

        1. brmore

          So we’ll abandon personal choice / freedom in the face of “it won’t look good to reader”?I would submit that if I opt out and you comment on MY comment, you are abiding by / agreeing to my terms…. and your post would be automatically excluded from sharing.

          1. ShanaC

            Depends how far you take the concept of personal choice, public spheres, andspace. We’re still negotiating the idea of “My” and “space” and “sharing”and what this all means. In some sort of physical reality, you are staringat a screen, and getting emotional about things on a screen- that is amassive change.What right do you have to impose on my space, or those of the anonymousreader? There are minimalist positions that would say your rights only workon the comment and comment itself, not the followup material after it, andthat you do not do not have the right to impose on those that follow. (justas in a debate- almost all material is allowed out there, just because yougo first does not mean you have the right to suppress material ofyour opponent without reason)* In fact, lets take it a step further- what exactly does your commentconstitute in terms of you? I suspect that you see this material as areflection of you and your space, and you take offense at those beinginfringed upon. Why? Where do you exist here?

          2. brmore

            Thoroughly agree that these concepts are up for discussion and negotiation. My proposition that, as you aptly state, I went first therefore I win is offered only in context that it is a rule upon which to “start”. Does not preclude change down the road as these definitions become clearer. It is also has the advantages of being clear cut and easy to understand, as well as offering you (the sub commenter, I guess) the opportunity to either agree to terms and either continue or start parallel offering.As far as what my comment constitutes to me? Not sure, actually … w/out straining brain to hard I can argue both that:a) my comment is a voluntary contribution to Mr. Wilson’s thoughts and as such subject entirely to his choices, and b) my comment is my voice and thought expressed in “opposition” and as such is subject solely to my own jurisdiction.Good subject for thought, for sure!

          3. ShanaC

            Constantly splitting is usually not a good option for lots of people. It would kill this discussion fast.and b) is the hinge of what we seem to be discussing. These are people’s voices- even if we can’t define where those people are clearly. Those people have feelings. They also need to interact with other people to make effective choice and community. It’s hard.

          4. brmore

            BTW, this is why Disqus rocks.

          5. ShanaC

            Agreed.

          6. RichardF

            If you don’t have control of your comments and your comment doesn’t constitute/reflect a part of you then what’s the point of having a Disqus profile?What I like about this community (and Disqus enables that community feeling) is that most people commenting are “putting themselves out there” which engenders mostly respectful discussion.It should be relatively easy for Disqus to implement an option whereby I can choose a default setting that will display any comments I make on AVC as from a guest outside of where I posted it.I am really unhappy that my comments can show up on another website and look as though I posted them directly on that site.

          7. ShanaC

            I think these comments do reflect you (or me) depending on the person.As I said, there is a difference between the individual and the community. It’s one the reason there are private pages for Disqus users.There are still questions that were never answered about how communities change, grow, and adapt to insiders, outsiders passing through, and outsiders on their way to becoming insiders. You aren’t just you on the web- you are among some sort of many.

    4. ShanaC

      Why are they freeloading on you anymore than you would be freeloading on them?

      1. andyswan

        Because they are using the content I create without my permission. It’s thesame way that Lady Gaga might not accept her song playing without herpermission on the lead-in to the Glenn Beck show…..(p.s. I really have nothing against Business Insider….I’m just using thisexample from this post as the jumping off point for a conversation aboutwhether or not I should be in control of where my content is published, orif Disqus should, or if Fred should….)

        1. Mark Essel

          This get’s to the heart of shared media ownership. Social web creations are owned by everyone, and no one, yet companies profit from selling access to the data.

        2. ShanaC

          (No, I agree with you about your content and that there should be a conversation there- but this conversation begins and ends with how we think of content production and its rewards and punishments- if it is a community exercise- then we have a problem in that communities are organic things)(Can we end the parenthetical discussion?)

    5. Aviah Laor

      Good idea. A “posted here” filter near the “sort by” filter. But this can also hide comments in the middle of a discussion thread, unless people use this filter all the time which will make the original idea of cross posting obsolete.

    6. fredwilson

      Its all part of my grand plan to convert them to avc readers andy

      1. andyswan

        Ha….I know. I don’t question your reasons for cross posting your content. I question the validity of cross-posting my comment without my permission, or at least disclosure and some explanation that my comment won’t appear on some “Business Thoughts for Spammers” website and therefore make it appear as though I frequent that site, participate in it, and therefore endorse it.Who owns my comment? Me? You? Disqus?It’s an important question in this discussion. I’d love to hear Daniel Ha’s position

        1. CJ

          I wrote above that I’d hate to see each commenter need to give permission to have his/her comments crossposted or reposted, I didn’t think about it from the standpoint of that comment endorsing the site where the content is posted. While I still think that it would be folly to treat each individual comment as IP, I think the subject of endorsement is a valid one and one that requires some thought. Especially when the crossposting site has *Insider in the domain name.

        2. fredwilson

          The blog post owns your comment. Where it goes, your comment goes. That’s my position

          1. AC

            Why not add something like “posted by John while reading at AVC.com”? Then your blog gets promotion, and you get rid of the problem of implicit endorsement.

          2. fredwilson

            That is the right solution. I hope disqus will implement it

  6. Mark Essel

    If Google Buzz can get this right, posts that feed there will become alot more interesting.I had wanted that from Hacker news for a while, and while Disqus pulls in reactions they’re not nested properly and still feel outside of the comments.

    1. fredwilson

      I don’t want to participate in buzz discussions so I don’t think that will take off for my contentHacker news is more complicated. I do participate there but wish I could do that in one place

      1. Mark Essel

        But buzz discussions would look like our comments if implemented right, and vice versa. They would be joined like on Business Insider – which is just another publishing venue.Some interesting points above on segmenting the community for reading purposes.

  7. Ivan Kirigin

    I’ve been waiting for this for ages. At http://tipjoy.com I wanted to have comment threads from the source content, not a separate thread. This is especially important for smaller communities.

  8. marfi

    Extremely valid point, this is what we are striving to achieve at htp://favit.com, now imagine that your link gets reshared on twitter & facebook and commented upon there too, wouldn’t it be nice to have these discussions re-united under your original post too? Can you even imagine how many atoms of conversations might exits at different platform around your aggregated/rss-ed content, it would be awesome when we finally crack it and bring it all in one place ๐Ÿ™‚ So stay tuned, the moment is near and would require just a simple wp plug in ๐Ÿ™‚

    1. fredwilson

      Yes, a broad solution to this would be great

  9. Norbert Mayer-Wittmann

    Copying is stoopid — it’s the same plague as the photocopier… but somehow even more stoopider. Doesn’t anyone remember what links were made for?SHEESH! O_O

  10. Fred T

    Cross-referencing just means more SEO and better online presence. With the right control and moderation of comments, it will work well.

  11. Peter Van Dijck

    There are a number of disadvantages to this, all related to how the web works (has worked):- It kind of breaks the page model to duplicate that info (although it’s pretty cool in a linked-hypertext kind of way). I’m not sure breaking the page model is the way to go.- More generally, having comment providers introduces central points of failure (same problem with url shorteners).- And from a user experience pov: it may break user expectations to see their comments show up somewhere “else”.

    1. ShanaC

      Seeing myself is a tad disturbing- not knowing how this is made fault tolerant or not is I’m assuming Disqus’s prerogative.

    2. fredwilson

      How is having a comment provider and a blog host any different wrt single point of failure?

  12. Nikhil N.

    Shouldn’t this apply for all types of reposted content? If my tweet shows up on Facebook, shouldn’t I see my @replies in facebook and somehow see my facebook comments in twitter? When I repost a YouTube video on my blog, should the comments from my blog go back to YouTube? Seems like this should be something the web industry thinks more about.

    1. fredwilson

      Agreed

  13. Matt Mireles

    Hi Fred,You bring up a valid point, but I don’t think the answer is quite that simple. There is value in discriminationโ€“โ€“in fact, that’s one of the key components of what makes a community. The AVC.com crowd is different than the Business Insider crowd, and that’s great. Aggregating comment systems from across the web, while I can see how it would be tempting and could theoretically add a lot of value, is gonna create a huge signal-to-noise problem .Honestly, the more comments there are attached to post, the less likely I am to speak up. It makes it a less intimate experience. I mean, you wouldn’t go to your neighborhood pub and say “what this really needs to be is a gigantic beer garden that attracts people from all across the globe.” Sure, there’s value to that too, but it’s an entirely different beast. And yeah, maybe I’m wrong, but I don’t think you can really scale a community without changing its fundamental makeup. Too much noise, not enough signal. In this case, I like my silos. For all their downsides, they offer the thing I value most: intimacy.-Matt

    1. ShanaC

      Two human elements are in play here:1) Engendering community- I have no amazing answers- however, you are right to be worried about the overwhelmed feeling.2)How conversation shifts thought: As odd as this sounds, I’m wary of too much conversation: Depending on how people treat it, it can cause more biases than polling because of social pressures. Beware of your silos.

    2. Mark Essel

      We have faux intimacy hidden within an unrelenting stream of content. Who else will take time to dig through our comments here than the diehard regulars?Who else will tune in on twitter and follow the people we wish to learn from, as well as each other. Those attention focusing activities define the communities boundaries. Their soft but nevertheless require a price many can ill afford, our precious time.

  14. ShanaC

    There are a number of really interesting, vague ideas running through the comments here.Everyone seems to agree on the following: Community == good. Comments seem to promote community, therefore, comments == good. (roughly speaking).There also seems to be a desire to promote a barrier against just anyone commenting for the sake of “community”, because the others are others, and because lots of comments are overwhelming and can defeat the purpose of community. It is why a number of people are touching on this issue of facebook and twitter- what constitutes community? where? and how do you get everyone to play nice, work together?Semi-Irrelevant of if Disqus uses Salmon (hehehe…ummm, my last name is Carp) the biggest issue at hand is not your comment everywhere (although that can be painful)- it is fully conceiving of a digital space(s) so that I (or you) feel comfortable interacting with another. And that may be something just beyond what a computer can do. When push comes to shove, that “they” and “us” is sort of false- in the end, you are just a piece of metadata on a machine that can be linked together.

    1. Mark Essel

      Right on Shana, you explored this very well with your Facebook multi-user accountsWe like to know who is watching, or speaking to us

      1. ShanaC

        It’s also extremely liberating to be anonymous, its converse.

  15. Darren Bounds

    Hi Fred.I couldn’t agree more. It is the future and it’s already started.Are you familiar with the Salmon protocol? It’s a relatively new protocol being developed by Google for just this purpose.Salmon allows discrete systems with no previous knowledge of each other to share and exchange messages with the goal of unifying conversations which are currently fragmented around the web. Initially created to allow comments to ‘flow up stream’ back to the originating blog post, the usecase range is now much more broad and the protocol itself is now a fundamental component of social messaging in the DiSo stack.Salmon is currently implemented by both Cliqset and Status.net, and Google (lead by John Panzer) are in the process of implementing it within Buzz and Blogger.It’s definitely worth looking into.

    1. fredwilson

      Hopefully the salmon team will work with disqus

      1. Mark Essel

        Tyler (my cofounder) was able to implement it in our feed reader project. Took him a couple of man weeks to understand and debug it, but he’s comfortable with it now.

  16. Rocky Agrawal

    BI also has it’s own comment box below the Disqus block. In this case there weren’t any comments last I checked, but several times you end up with comments in both Disqus and BI. I’m guessing the BI block doesn’t get propagated back.

  17. Amber

    This is the only good argument I’ve seen to using something as bulky and as buggy as Disqus as opposed to native comments. And of course, this means publishers will have to implement it.DotSpots solves this problem, but still appears to be lacking widespread adoption.

    1. fredwilson

      I’ve been using disqus for three years now and its amazing. I don’t feel like it is buggy at all

      1. Mark Essel

        I have used it less but encountered problems with closed comments (not by my intention or settings changes) and issues with mobile. Sometimes Disqus just wouldn’t finish loading.These issues are isolated and small in the year+ I’ve used Disqus but when they happen it’s enough to temporarily deactivate their comment aggregating.If I see a failwhale on my comments it’s bad

      2. Shripriya

        When you are on a slow connection (like I am right now), 90% of the time Disqus will not load. The page will load and Disqus will spin for a while and then just quit. It’s very annoying. Just FYI.

        1. fredwilson

          Dial up or slow broadband

          1. Shripriya

            Slow broadband.

  18. Steven Kane

    Does BI compensate you for cross posting? If so, how do they calculate comp?Does anyone compensate you for cross posting?

    1. fredwilson

      I’ve been offered (not by BI though) but I don’t want to be compensated with cash. Its attention I want and if anything I should be paying them for distribution

      1. Steven Kane

        do you think that’s true for bloggers who aren’t as well to do?bloggers who try to make a living from blogging?i think you are a special case, as you donate ad revenues from AVC tocharity, and get a huge indirect benefit from distribution (eg,promotion of USV).the typical blogger should be paid for cross posting, and wants to bepaid for such, i think.

        1. fredwilson

          I agree. Its all about the license to their content that they set up

        2. Margi

          Right. There are a few things at play here. First is, what are the best practices for re-posting content? A site shouldn’t repost an author without permission in order to garner traffic, particularly if the content is seamlessly integrated. It seems fraudulent Next, the manner in which content is posted matters. Re-posting should link to the original site, where, I think, comments should be directed. The 99% does a good job of selecting links from around the web and driving traffic to the original sites.I discuss a few models for reposting content on my blog: http://margaretkimball.com/…Thanks, Fred, for the discussion!Margi

  19. RichardF

    Wow I’m shocked to learn that my comments are broadcast out to other sites without my explicit permission.I’m with Andy here all the way, don’t like the fact that I’m not in control of where my comments appear. It’s the reason I’ve locked down facebook and don’t post much on Twitter.Really disappointed ๐Ÿ™

    1. fredwilson

      Are you serious richard? If so, I am sorry. But this blog is not a private place and never has been

      1. RichardF

        I am serious Fred. I realise that this isn’t a private place but I placed my comment here in this community not on Business Insider and that is important to me because where I choose to post is part of the context. However to someone arriving at the Business Insider article it looks like I commented there.Not having control over where and how my comments are seen is a fail as far as I’m concerned because I don’t know where your content is going to be cross posted and my comments with it.So as an example, taking it to the extreme end lets say you might post on a certain technology, I comment on it, then the article is cross posted on a pron industry website because the technology is of interest to them. All of a sudden it appears I’m posting on a pron industry website. That’s an extreme example but you catch my drift.It is easily got around by Disqus if there is a “post appears as guest outside of where you placed the original comment” option either at the global account level or individual comment level.No need to be sorry Fred I know you are of the “completely open on the net” opinion. I am not and this has been a lesson for me, it was naive of me to think that a post I make here stays here.

        1. fredwilson

          Think of it as this community is portable all over the netIt is not just your comment, but the entire discussionAnd my CC license forbids cross posting on porn and hate speech sitesI suspect the only places these discussions will end up is other business and tech sites

          1. Mark Essel

            Good clause on the CC.

          2. RichardF

            Happy to think about it as a portable community as long as I get something like an AVC badge that is associated with my comment when it shows up on another site thus distinguishing it as a comment made on AVC.

  20. GP

    The distributed/ fractured landscape of affinity/vertical community websites often results in little or no comments/discussion. Getting that first post/comment is often the hardest.As a publisher of 10+ outdoor recreation/ action sports sites, we know this problem too well. In response, we have created a diso, across our publications, plus 25 other sites, all tightly focused around sports and recreation. Our model incorporates standardized social media, profiles and the accompanying communications tools, shared, real-time across the network. We have found that each website is enhanced and their user community enriched, by the real-time sharing of content and communications across all the sites in our network. We have also learned that many folks, visit numerous sites in their online travels; AVC AND Business Insider AND…To see distributed video, comments and profile in action, go here:http://broadbandsports.com/node/5366http://videos.dirtragmag.com/node/5366http://video.dirtworld.com/node/5366

  21. Venkat

    For once, I strongly disagree.I think there’s a LOT of value in having the same item discussed by communities with very different, disconnected cultures. If you tried to centralize them merely to make them more legible/less confusing to the author (you, in this case), you could lose a lot of value and homogenize things. You’d lose diversity, quantity and quality.My own most successful post was debated and dissected in very different ways on my own site, Slashdot, Hacker News, metafilter, facebook etc. This sort of thing is rarer for me than for you, but even with my limited data points, I could see the value in not centralizing all discussion. It was much harder for me to follow the distributed discussion, but the work was worth it, since I got different types of insight and feedback from the different locations. To take a trivial example, people were far more flattering on my own site than on some other sites, and that negative feedback was helpful.Different social containers create different types of value. It is important for bloggers to realize that once a post is ‘out there,’ it acquires a life of its own, and any effort to discipline its spread by making it more legible/controllable to any one party carries a cost in local and total value. If you love something, let it go.This theme of the hidden costs of legibility and centralized control, btw, is central to one of my favorite books, James Scott’s Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed. Applying the framework of that book, what you are proposing is dangerously close to the sort of statist architectural thinking that created urban wastelands like Brasilia.Disqus is still an excellent idea (I don’t use it on my site for a mix of technical and social architecture reasons, but may change my mind in the future), but it is important that as they evolve, they provide control knobs that allow you to manage the local/global tradeoff so content property owners can create an ambiance anywhere on the spectrum from Starbucks to Joe’s Local Cafe. Maybe property owners can set a default ‘max scope’ for sharing a thread (an asymettrical set of master-slave relationships among content properties is implied here), and within that scope, individual commenters can further control where their comments can be seen. Responses would inherit scope and have control within it. I’ve worked on such models in very different contexts (which I can’t talk about), and they can be made to work.Venkat

    1. Aviah Laor

      Good points for the qualitative characteristics of communities.Just want to add that also sheer quantity counts. There is a limit to the comments that Fred can read and respond, and there is a limit to the number of comments which can hold a discussion. Most commented posts get 200-250 comments and at this point it’s hard to read the thread, so people will start polling comments and create a fragmented thread (not necessarily a bad thing, but it’s different).

    2. Mark Essel

      There will always be discussions on other blogs about good/popular posts but you make a good point for varied feedback silos. The limiting factor is most certainly volume, we just can’t soak up popular comment threads regularly. That’s true at HackerNews as well.On the flip side there’s a pretty interesting mix of commenters here.

    3. ShanaC

      Things get interesting from a though perspective if you can get different communities to interact. Different people, different worldview. That’s where good energy comes from.

      1. Venkat

        I’d qualify that comment. You want different communities weakly interacting. Small worlds with weak links. If the connection is too strong, you get homogeneity. If it is too weak, you get isolated silos.

        1. ShanaC

          Correct. And I have no amazing answers about how to create weak chemistry. It is a topic in discussion from what I can tell. And it seems to requirea lot of human planning and intervention.

  22. Siminoff

    Not sure if you remember but I sent this suggestion to the guys at Disqus in April of 2008, where I called it comment mirroring. Glad to see it is finally going to become a reality as I think it will be a really valuable feature!

  23. Donna Brewington White

    I do see great value in this, especially to you as the blogger, but like some of the others, wonder what this will do to the community feel of the blog. It’s fascinating how some of the same questions faced by communities in general are also faced by online communities. My guess is that some of the things that bring discomfort will also be things that make the community more vibrant and will sharpen the participants. Maybe.I noticed the other day commenting on another blog how two of the regulars from this community received negative responses to their comments that they probably would not have received here where they are better known. It wasn’t so much a matter of disagreeing as it was just not “getting” one commenter’s humor or another one’s intellect. It was interesting to observe. Also, made me realize once again, what a good thing we have here.

  24. obscurelyfamous

    Good thoughts in this thread. We talk about this often, and Fred will vouch for this. We think we know how to make it work but we have some concerns about making it effective at scale. The feedback here echoes some of those concerns but also makes it clear that it’s very much worth delivering on soon.

  25. Jurrie Hobers

    I like the idea of making the ‘rest’ of the web comments available to the community.But I would like to see that separated. Why not have your own community responses and then a separated part “what are others saying” (a bit like the reactions part below)That way it would keep the community feel / selection, and includes what other sites are commenting as well for the ones who are interested.

    1. Mark Essel

      But with better reaction threading. Piling them on is tough on the reader

  26. Jeff Greenhouse

    As a side effect of this article, it’s funny to think about how many times in the same day different people have the same discussion on different sites. And I’m sure each time they feel a sense of exhilaration believing that they are breaking new ground. That said, if you try to let a big enough audience all participate in the same conversation, they’ll drown each other out and nobody will have a snowball’s chance (in Philadelphia today – over 100 degrees!) of actually following the conversation.Just a few random (probably unoriginal) thoughts. Cheers!

  27. LIAD

    Just because I agree to give away my IP in the form of my comments on this site, doesn’t necessarily mean I’m happy for them to be taken gratis by other sites. Comments are quasi- endorsements. Users should get an active say in who can piggyback off them.I get they’re contrarian thinkers like Fred who love others “leveraging” their content because their goal is reach and not bucks.For others, whose goal is income, cross posting is a real parasite.The complete lack of innovation of sites who ‘cross post’ aka steal content as their main business model is nauseating to me

    1. CJ

      As much as I value the comments on this and other sites, and I value them highly, I don’t think internet comments are IP, the same as a letter to the editor of a newspaper isn’t IP. While I do see your point, I’d hate to see a system where the owner of a blog needed to get each individual commenter’s permission to repost or crosspost his/her opinion.

    2. fredwilson

      Yeah but if you want to comment on my content, you have to be willing to have it travel with my contentThat’s always been my approach going back to the ‘take my rss feed’ post over five years ago now

  28. CJ

    I hate all of the *Insider sites…inflammatory headlines that cause reactionary responses often widely dissociated from the actual content of the article. I prefer my news/opinion pieces without the tabloid journalism, thank you very much.

    1. fredwilson

      I’m with you on the headlines. I was very upset with some rewrites of my headlines they did

  29. maxkalehoff

    It would be great to get Google’s positioning on this from an SEO perspective. Generally, Google doesn’t like exact, duplicate content. Comments most often are programmed as no-follow, to reduce spammer incentive. But you still have the main body content.