Facebook used as an online identity management solution? Yeah, that puzzled look on your face compares to my initial reaction when I started noticing this trend (among websites from all kinds of industries) of using Facebook as their (blog) commenting system. Some large tech websites, such as TechCrunch have completely moved over to Facebook’s Social Comments Box plugin as their solution while others allow for multiple comment options, including Google accounts.
Using FB comments can provide clear benefits to content providers as it eliminates most of the spam and dumb/evil/malicious comments, something TechCrunch for instance had a serious problem with in the past. Ideally, using someone’s real identity (assuming their FB profile is authentic) should bring up the quality of exchanges and improve the conversation. On the other hand, don’t we already have tools in place to combat spam? How about Akismet and Bad Behavior to name a couple. So why Facebook then? It is easy to see why, it’s slowly becoming the core online “hang out spot” for most and as such people can simply continue using their identities across other multiple sites. This is a great move by Facebook as the more we use them across internet the more they learn about us which they can then use for targeted marketing (among other things). Effective ads bring revenue.
However, could this push to use FB profiles also have a negative impact? Yes it can and here’s where I see that come into play. In the not so distant days of internet, chat rooms and blogs, people were (and still are) leaving comments under their pseudonyms which lead to more open and honest discussion (along with an occasional argument or two), but it’s what people liked about being online, being able to search, roam, comment and explore without being tied to their proper, socially accepted persona. Furthermore, some folks would expect their comments to serve as traffic baits in hopes that they could get some of the visitors to follow them to their business, website or a blog. Now, that that that’s no longer an option, I wonder if the participation has decreased on TechCrunch and other sites which have completely moved over to Facebook comments? It would be interesting to know if this change had any negative impact on the volume of comments and interaction between readers/viewers and publishers. Based on some preliminary tests and my gut feeling, the answer is yes. Unfortunately, on most websites this is not a win-win situation.
Using Facebook comments presents clear benefits for publishers and potential drawbacks for both publishers and readers. To answer who wins in the end, one must ask the question: Who is the website’s intended audience?