The Value of a Comment - Jorge Albinagorta

Jorge Albinagorta wrote an interesting twitter note about comments. Here is is twitter profile and this is what he said:

theory: blogs' readers are commenting less on posts rather tweeting their feedback = content fragmentation that makes comments more valuable

There is a lot of truth in what he says and there is some that I am not sure I agree with but I've been thinking about it for many hours now. On the surface, content and discussion fragmentation is real but I don't think twitter is the main cause. I think the main cause is due to the belief that the same post should be placed in as many places as possible. I get it because people post for a lot of different reasons and sometimes, the post is not so much about getting a conversation going but rather to promote something so the goal of the post is creating awareness rather than actually getting a conversation going.

It's easier to leave a quick twitter reply to an idea and since you only have 140 characters to do it, no one is expecting a reply of 150 characters or more. I have never thought about the value of a comment on a blog post compared to the value of a twitter reply to an idea and I don't even know how you would measure it.

I think Jorge's twitter thought/comment is one of the more interesting ones I've seen simply because I can't really get it out of my head. Thanks Jorge.

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Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Recruiting Animal on April 24, 2009 at 8:18am

Anti-Jerry. That's hilarious. You have to do it today. Can't wait to see the pic.

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Permalink Reply by Jerry Albright on April 24, 2009 at 8:26am

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Permalink Reply by Maureen Sharib on April 24, 2009 at 9:56am

Sorry to pop this fantastic thought bubble - but it's quite simple really. 140 characters is just not enough room to put together any form of reasonable reply to a substantive topic.

Jerry's right in IDing what I see as Twitter's Achilles Heel. Maybe then 140 characters and a "click here to read more" feature might be in the offing?

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Permalink Reply by Recruiting Animal on April 24, 2009 at 9:58am

Maureen, come on. Does every venue have to be the same? Let the blowhards stay on the blogs and the people of the future (like me) who speak in beeps can have their Twitter. Okay. Hands off Twitter baby

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Permalink Reply by Maureen Sharib on April 24, 2009 at 10:26am

You can't fight progress, baby. Much as you try.
;)

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Permalink Reply by Rich on April 24, 2009 at 9:19pm

The initial post and the following comments really disrupt this argument. I'm going to talk about somewhere else. ;)

Recruiting Animal said:

Rich - does the film have anything to do with Jericho? And peanuts? [inside joke]

Jeremiah Owyang says that the fact that comments are happening all over the place is a good reason to open your company blog or website to them. That keeps them in view and allows you to respond.

Whether you agree with his solution or not my point is that he agrees with you about the distribution of comment.

But there were always discussion boards. And always multiple blogs about the same thing. Twitter hasn't changed that.

If anything, as Pam Claughton says, Twitter is being used to drive people to blog postings. They work in tandem and increase the number of comments on a blog because more people know about the posting.

(Pam was a prominent commenter on the trial close posting I mentioned above).

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Permalink Reply by Todd Kmiec on April 24, 2009 at 10:58pm

You guys crack me up. Too bad for me that I was too busy WORKING and on TWITTER all day to participate in this discussion when it happened. I know....WGAS. Just my two cents.....I don't put much thought into numbers of comments and RTs and all that. It's kind of a big picture thing participating in the industry that I love and that I make my living in. I can't figure out which one is better or which one will win, but I do like the blogs and I do like Twitter and they both feel like the time I spend there is worth something. There are too many things out there for me to pay attention to them all. Maybe if my Tweetdeck could have a column for the blog posts on RBC, so I can see it alongside of my Twitter Follows, my FB Friends and my #splits filters???? That might be a cool thing to give me a better opportunity to see the blogs I want to click on and participate in the discussion.

TK