Comment on ESPN.com....through facebook

[gravehunter]

All comments to ESPN.com stories will have to be made on facebook. Here is the notice that is being posted on the site:
Effective July 17, ESPN will be transitioning all conversations to Facebook comments. At that time a Facebook account will be required to post comments on new articles. Previous comments and conversations will be closed to comment but can still be viewed.

 

[imjustagirl]

Heard about this happening elsewhere. Makes people more accountable for their comments. I say it's a good thing.

 

[BurnsWhenIPee]

Heard about this happening elsewhere. Makes people more accountable for their comments. I say it's a good thing.

Agree. It will cut down on comments dramatically, but 95 percent of the comments you'll lose are ones you won't miss anyway.

The fact that you'll lose the drive-by assholes chiming in with their pithy little hilarious contests about who can be the biggest douchebag is not a negative, IMO. And that goes for newspapers who have gone to Facebook commenting, as well.

 

[Versatile]

The fact that you'll lose the drive-by assholes chiming in with their pithy little hilarious contests about who can be the biggest douchebag is not a negative, IMO. And that goes for newspapers who have gone to Facebook commenting, as well.

You don't lose that. Maybe you cut down on it. But it's still the dominant form of comment.

 

[sgreenwell]

The fact that you'll lose the drive-by assholes chiming in with their pithy little hilarious contests about who can be the biggest douchebag is not a negative, IMO. And that goes for newspapers who have gone to Facebook commenting, as well.

You don't lose that. Maybe you cut down on it. But it's still the dominant form of comment.

Agree. It's in fact shocking to me how many people still act like an asshole - or don't realize how much of an asshole they are - when they're using their real name.

 

[schiezainc]

Good thing you can't just up and create a fake Facebook profile and use that to comment on sites.

 

[Versatile]

Good thing you can't just up and create a fake Facebook profile and use that to comment on sites.

That's a pain in the ass, and Facebook eventually will delete a fake account.

The entire idea is to make commenting anonymously difficult, not to stop it entirely. Give people hoops to jump through, and most won't.

 

[spikechiquet]

Can we switch to FB comments here? I'd love to get rid of a few of you!!

 

[playthrough]

Papers really missed the boat on not charging a nickel or a dime or whatever for comments. Hey, lunatics, want to rant on every story? Carry on an argument with another anonymous lunatic? No problem, leave a credit card number and the floor is yours.

ESPN.com could have made even more money off all the tools who love seeing their (fake) name on their site.

 

[Rawbot]

We transitioned to Facebook-linked comments about 1.5 years ago, and it hasn't kept the crazies away at all. Once you reach a certain level of crazy, there's rarely any level of shame involved anyway, so anonymity isn't really much of a concern for a lot of folks.

 

[DK]

Good thing you can't just up and create a fake Facebook profile and use that to comment on sites.

That's a pain in the ass, and Facebook eventually will delete a fake account.

The entire idea is to make commenting anonymously difficult, not to stop it entirely. Give people hoops to jump through, and most won't.

I can now rest easy this morning knowing that dozens upon dozens of Facebook accounts named Danny Noonan and Judge Smails are all legitimate.

 

[Versatile]

Has Facebook changed it's policy? For the first five years, fake accounts were deleted. It sometimes took months.

 

[JamesCimburek]

Our web people are panicking because our web traffic has taken a hit over the past three months, since we went to Facebook-login commenting. Have any of your papers taken traffic hits, and how long did it take to bounce back?

 

[SnarkShark]

Our web people are panicking because our web traffic has taken a hit over the past three months, since we went to Facebook-login commenting. Have any of your papers taken traffic hits, and how long did it take to bounce back?

This is the biggest cost of moving to Facebook comments. Page views are going to take a big hit. People refreshing the page constantly to see what the next comment is going to say is eliminated.

A couple of papers I follow have done this and their comments have been essentially reduced to zero. I'm not saying that's the case for all publications, but I believe that's what the majority are experiencing.

The people I've talked at those papers are more relieved they don't have to monitor the comments than bothered they're losing page views.

 

[sportsed]

I'd believe that trading a little traffic (actual comments and the refreshed page views that come with them are small potatoes in the grand scheme of things) for the ability to market to verified users was a no-brainer in the never-ending quest of the next great revenue stream. That the overall product is spared some, if not most, of its most vile "user contributions" is an added bonus. In the end, it wouldn't surprise me that this was a joint venture of sorts between ESPN and Facebook, as the two companies mine the data of users who frequent content of their favorite sports and teams on ESPN's sites, then couple that info with all the users' "likes" and "check-ins" and whatnot on Facebook. That's advertising gold.

 

[Ace]

Good thing you can't just up and create a fake Facebook profile and use that to comment on sites.

That's a pain in the ass, and Facebook eventually will delete a fake account.

The entire idea is to make commenting anonymously difficult, not to stop it entirely. Give people hoops to jump through, and most won't.

I can now rest easy this morning knowing that dozens upon dozens of Facebook accounts named Danny Noonan and Judge Smails are all legitimate.

Now you're going to tell me I don't really have a date Friday with Lacey Underall.

 

[DK]

Yeah, funny this switch takes place on the same day the mother ship rehires Captain Ahab. Not a coincidence at all.