Last week we launched Cognition, a studio blog, that replaced the traditional open-mic text area commenting system with two options: Either post a response via your own Twitter account or link to a post on your own blog. To kick things off Jeffrey took the honor of writing the first post and introduced our experiment. He wrote:
Hundreds of readers replied with support, curiosity, and doubt. All-in-all it has been the best response we could have hoped for. A lot of the responses pertained to the Twitter integration. I suspect most of the comments we received were the result of people just kicking the tires but there were a few who questioned our motive and intentions via Twitter and blogs. As someone who has led this project from the very first day let me walk you through our thought process.
In some very early discussion about Cognition the topic of comments came up. I suggested that we try to find a way to integrate Twitter and comments instead of having them be two separate pieces of functionality. Mr. Unger (Director of User Experience), playing the much needed devil's advocate, questioned the idea of how we would integrate Twitter, "if comments are restricted to 140 characters, it does not seem that format would allow for much substance." To which I replied, "The idea of using Twitter from comments came from the fact that comments on most blogs are dead. There are a few blogs that have productive comments from their users but otherwise we have all seen a shift from blog comments to Twitter comments. The idea was to embrace this shift and a format the encourages brevity or responsive blog posts (for those who always want to write a short essay as a comment). It would be cool to find a way to incorporate reader's Twitter comments but after a month if it sucks then we'll just move on."
None of us could imagine creating a blog without comments—but we have all observed that commenting on blogs, in general, has decreased since the use of twitter has increased. Of course there are exceptions—there will always been exceptions—but it seems that these days most readers will respond almost exclusively via Twitter instead of leaving a blog comment. Because of this it seems that blog comment threads are rarely engaging on the majority of websites today. Sure, there are some cases where every now and then a blog post will actually foster a good comment thread but as long time Airbag reader Thibaut noted:
Of course this applies to Twitter comments as James Young observed on his blog:
The problem with most comment threads is that they can reach that useless tipping point very quickly. Without having an active moderator to keep up with all of the various threads it's practically impossible to provide any sort of conversational value.
Meanwhile we have also informally noticed a decline in blog usage since the wider adoption of Twitter within our community. Sites like Airbag have been rotting away like the Soviet's Pacific Fleet in the 90's, their glory days seemingly behind them while waiting for their room assignment at Sunset Estate. Happy Cog loves blogs. So much so that I think almost everyone of us has at least one and the majority of us have three or more. What if we could help bring some life back into the old network by encouraging people to write blog posts when they have more to say than what can fit into one-hundred-and-forty characters? Anything we can do to bring writers back to their blogs would be a "big win" win.
With all of this in mind here is our pre-launch strategy in a nutshell: Let's use Twitter for what it's good for: quick and disposable comments and let's encourage more thoughtful responses on blogs. We'll have harnessed Twitter in an appropriate way while, hopefully, bringing new life to old blogs (or maybe even start a few).
It's a little early to say whether commenting-via-twitter-and-blogs works or not but the sheer numbers of positive comments tells us that we're on to something with this idea. After a few days it's already evident that some tweaks are needed. For starters, we realize the design needs to provide equal emphasis on promoting a blogged response as much as one via Twitter—if not more so. And blog comments/links should be given more emphasis because we should reward those who take the time to write out a longer response. Meanwhile, we've already started mapping out how to filter out retweets, reposts, etc.—that should help improve the signal-to-noise ratio.
We'll keep working at this until we either get this right or end up turning to a different solution. However this shakes out, we're already learning from trying something new which ultimately means adds value for our clients, our friends, and our community.
UPDATE My friend and colleague Greg Hoy comments on the user response thus far and our approach for making changes.
An excellent explanation that hits many of the points that came to mind once i visited the new blog. Well thought out and interesting.
Thanks for the backstory. Especially considering the fact that my current site is only twitter. ;)
By the way, the new HappyCogBlog is wonderful. Nice work.
Tremendous idea - I really hope it works. An extra I think I'd like to see: filter out Twitter comments completely at the click of a button so that one can be left with blog-reply-posts (BuRPs?) only.
Twitter comments! Innovative!
Congrats on the new blog, guys. It looks nice and I'm sure you'll have tons of great content, given the quality of people that'll be writing there.
Can you comment on the decision not to use @ replies for the tweet comments? With the current implementation, it feels as though you're increasing the amount of noise on Twitter, showing my comment out-of-context to my follower who may or may not be interested in following along with Cognition content and discussion. Why not post my comment as an @ reply to @cognition (or whatever), so only those following both me and @cogniton see it? It would ensure the content only goes to those interested and reduce the amount of noise you're adding to an already-noisy medium. I feel like tweeting every comment I make on Cognition out to my followers will annoy them just the same as tweeting out every checkin I make on Foursquare would.
I have to admit that, to me, the current implementation feels like a desperate ploy for traffic rather than an attempt at generating meaningful discussion. Formatting the tweet as an @ reply would feel more genuine and not so spammy.
As excellent an idea as I think this is, I can’t help but feel that the idea of using Twitter for comments has some potentially serious caveats (depending, of course, on long-term goals):
For legacy purposes, the database is no longer in your control. The keeping of comments is left entirely up to “The Cloud” in Twitter, so if there is any desire to archive, migrate, edit (yes, I do correct others’ spelling mistakes sometimes), or any other number of things you could wish do with your own information, you’re pretty well screwed. Though, I suspect that this was an acceptable loss that was covered when you guys were discussing it. Now it becomes a game of cat-and-mouse, keeping up with any changes that Twitter makes to the API, or TOS (in the event that they someday decide to prune third-party usage in cases like these).
Also, comment spam is difficult enough to deal with in standard blog systems. But I can’t imaging making the decision to run with a service that is known for: it’s ability to fail on a regular basis, it’s vast amount of spam accounts, and other similar vulnerabilities. What steps have been taken to ensure that this garbage doesn’t end up on the Cog?
I'll admit, I'm having trouble wrapping my brain around this. I really like the idea of using Twitter as a sort of authentication system for comments. Blogs like Elliott Kember's Think Pink have done that for awhile, and it makes a lot of sense. But I can't, for the life of me, think of many scenarios where a comment that make sense in the context of a blog post would make sense to anyone following my Twitter-stream—even to other folks who had read the same blog post.
That said, I'm willing to be wrong and definitely curious to see how this works over time. Kudos for trying something new-ish (hat-tip Kenny) and fancy.
> Thanks for the backstory. Especially considering the fact that my current site is only twitter.
Get that site live Luxury! It's a national holiday, the perfect time to launch a new site.
> By the way, the new HappyCogBlog is wonderful. Nice work.
Thanks. The team at large did a really great job.
> Why not post my comment as an @ reply to @cognition (or whatever), so only those following both me and @cogniton see it? It would ensure the content only goes to those interested and reduce the amount of noise you're adding to an already-noisy medium.
This is an interesting idea. I don't recall if this exact approach ever came up but I do know there was sensitivity to trying to limit the amount of characters we're using for each message. On the other hand, the whole point is to either provide a quick comment (or series of comments) via Twitter or, if you really have something to say, then post it to your blog. Perhaps reducing the amount of characters would induce more blog posts?! Whatever the outcome this is a good idea Jeff and I'll bring it back to the group. Thanks!
@Anton We're taking baby steps here. There are a lot of variables to figure out including some which you mention. It's a work in progress and we'll have some answers to your questions in the near future.
> That said, I'm willing to be wrong and definitely curious to see how this works over time. Kudos for trying something new-ish (hat-tip Kenny) and fancy.
That's exactly the spirit we're working with.
> I have to admit that, to me, the current implementation feels like a desperate ploy for traffic rather than an attempt at generating meaningful discussion.
I forgot to respond to this comment. I hope this is crystal clear: We took this step to try something new, to play a bit. If we ever reach the point that we need a desperate ploy for traffic then you can bet we'll really go for broke, dive deep, and do our very best to make the evening news. Oh, and it will include the Panda suit.
I didn't like the idea at first, but then I read the "comments".
If you look a bit closer, it's changing/ reframing the way users look at commenting. More like a Tumblr like function, but more functional and adopted. It's genius.
I love this whole experiment and am so glad you're trying it.
I also want to second Mssr Croft's suggestion, though the idea that you're doing this as a way to increase traffic strikes me as silly (panda suits, etc.). Using @replies would allow people to comment without introducing non sequitur tweets into their timeline. Although many readers won't care about that, I suspect many others (me!) will be much more likely to use the Twitter option with @replies.
> I hope this is crystal clear: We took this step to try something new, to play a bit. If we ever reach the point that we need a desperate ploy for traffic then you can bet we'll really go for broke, dive deep, and do our very best to make the evening news. Oh, and it will include the Panda suit.
Hah.
Yes, I certainly know that you don't need a desperate ploy for traffic, and that's why it felt odd, to me. It feels like an attempt to "go viral" or whatever the kids call it these days, rather than a way to enhance the level of discourse. But I know enough of you guys well enough to know that you wouldn't actually be choosing to increase meaningless visitors instead of increase engagement, so to me, it feels very out of alignment with your brand. I'm sure you wasn't actually just a ploy for traffic, but it kind of feels spammy like that, regardless.
> None of us could imagine creating a blog without comments—but we have all observed that commenting on blogs, in general, has decreased since the use of twitter has increased.
I've certainly noticed less comments on my personal blog since the rise of Twitter. At the same time, I've had much, much more engagement with my readership than I ever did before Twitter. Also at the same time, the quality of blog comments I do get has increased (presumably because those who would simply write a useless one-liner do it on Twitter, instead of on my site). Personally, I'll take increased engagement and quality of comments over sheer number of comments.
I do applaud your willingness to experiment, for sure. I think you're trying to solve a problem that actually does exist. I do think discussion in our community has become more fragmented and more difficult to track and follow what you're interested in that it was before Twitter. But I wonder if your solution actually helps or hurts. Certainly, many will copy it. Many will copy anything Happy Cog does, and you know that (and generally for good reason -- you guys know what you're doing). I just fear that more chatter on the Twitters isn't going to make it any easier for us to find what we're looking for.
If the @ reply idea has any resonance with your team, that's awesome. If not, that's fine, too. But I hope, one way or another, you'll do what you can to limit the increased out-of-context chatter on Twitter. I think most of us already have plenty of that.
"Kids today are more likely to respond to a blog post on Twitter than in the article's comments section."
Kids today are also more likely to choose ice cream over fruits and vegetables... or television over books... or lecture notes over class attendance.
As someone who is just as guilty as anyone else of having a decreased attention span lately, I want to use/create/develop solutions that go in the other direction. My next likely contribution to the world of media and technology will be something that cuts all of these "real-time" distractions off at the knees and gives us time to consume and create the long-form thoughts that are better for our long-term intellectual enlightenment.
Good discussion here. To that point:
Where does the user go to voice a thoughtful opinion about a post? Or discuss? Twitter certainly isn't the avenue.
In favor of:
I never liked writing comments because it became someone elses data- they were building their brand off of my content (Aka comment).
This addresses that in some respect.
> My next likely contribution to the world of media and technology will be something that cuts all of these "real-time" distractions off at the knees and gives us time to consume and create the long-form thoughts that are better for our long-term intellectual enlightenment.
I thought we have this already, it's called North Korea.
> I never liked writing comments because it became someone elses data- they were building their brand off of my content (Aka comment).
Interesting perspective. I take it you don't post to Dribbble?
Mr. Croft:
"Yes, I certainly know that you don't need a desperate ploy for traffic, and that's why it felt odd, to me. It feels like an attempt to "go viral" or whatever the kids call it these days, rather than a way to enhance the level of discourse. But I know enough of you guys well enough to know that you wouldn't actually be choosing to increase meaningless visitors instead of increase engagement, so to me, it feels very out of alignment with your brand. I'm sure you wasn't actually just a ploy for traffic, but it kind of feels spammy like that, regardless."
We were actually having a discussion just about this, and right after that whole twitter reputation/ranking thing that popped up a month or so ago.
In fact, I even called it out as the "potential poopin-fest" that it could be. And everyone worked toward solving something that didn't get us into that type of a situation. It was pretty cool, to be frank, to see people really working toward a good first step with the intention of either continuing to figure it out or to wisely kill the thing off, if we needed to.
The really cool thing is that there are still discussions on this topic and on how we can continue to improve--and avoid any of these types of "spammy" pitfalls. Thanks for that input.
I think the Facebook Like feature solves all these problems. Poked
The problem with the way North Korea does it is that they fabricate the information that ends up getting through (and also, they BBQ dog meat). The real trick in the next several years is going to be who can save people the most time while simultaneously keeping them the most informed. It's like Todd Jackson from Google said: "You can either be a shit funnel or a shit umbrella".
I agree with Mike D
Thanks for highlighting my thoughts, for those interested I've also written a follow up here http://www.welcomebrand.co.uk/blog/happy-cog-commenting-system-makes-no-sense-at-the-moment/ because honestly, I really just don't get it.
I saw the Cognition comment system as an encouragement to write blog posts, so I wrote a blog post about it yesterday. http://johnrainsford.com/articles/2010/10/11/re_cognition/
Great work!
Intriguing experiment. I will be keeping an eye out in consideration of AIGA's comment to Twitter exchange ratio.
Thanks for the thought, trial and explanations here.
I thought we have this already, it's called North Korea.
:D
What you guys have done with Cognition strikes me as brilliant. I see it as a natural evolution of blog interaction. Why? Simple: unlike typical blog comments, Twitter, Facebook and any other social hub are part of a big ecosystem that influences upon each other of us dynamically in lots of ways. No man is an island and certainly no blog should be one either. If someone wants to take time to answer back to something in more than 140 characters, linking to a blog or an URL wherever you can put in your thoughts makes a lot of sense (there's no excuse not to have a blog nowadays: you can even publish something using just email). In return, traffic gets more distributed and online interaction increased. I think you guys have hit a huge paradigm shift with this one. Its implementation may not be perfect at this time, but if there's something most blogs need to survive is more connections, not less.
I personally like the idea. I think experimentation — and the ability to do so — is what made the Web so popular in the first place. I see this as a step forward by embracing how people are currently communicating online. And, similar to how Twitter was initially perceived, some folks just don't get it right away.
Thanks for the background information, Greg. I'm looking forward to see how this little experiment progresses.
Let's take a step back and look beyond the cool new way/tool - regardless if Twitter is the right way to do this (I agree with Croft seems "spammy"). What disappoints me the most is for an agency that barks content content content, and who apparently LOVES blogs, they released a hollow site where the gimmick is the make.
Now that there are quite a few tweets-as-comments up there, I feel even more strongly that I'd like to turn them off in favour of blog-post-replies only. Or even just ordinary comments. The tweets thus far seem to consist of minimal signal and lots of noise from people I've never heard of and don't follow. That's not a slight on theses good people but merely a result of making it Twitter-easy to post something ephemeral and meaningless. If I could restrict the comments to people I follow, that might be interesting, because I'd be more likely to have a reason to pay attention to what they're saying. Ultimately, what value is it bringing to the reader? Not much, so far. I don't mind ephemeral stuff from people I follow and I don't mind substantial stuff from people I don't know, but ephemeral stuff from people I don't follow doesn't feel good. If the problem with blog comments is the prevalence of noisy, meaningless, me-too posts, then you've just exacerbated that problem and made it harder to post - and find - the interesting stuff. But maybe things will shake out in subsequent posts where you have less folk kicking the tyres.
I quite like the way Disqus does things - it seems to offer a lot to enhance the commenting experience and a lot to tackle the problems.
The current comments on the second post on cognition perfectly illustrates the main thing I don't like about this system, and what I think Charles Roper is getting at above. Right now there are three Twitter comments. One from @happycog announcing that the post you've just read is live, and two retweets of that same post. I don't want to see any of these. They are just more noise I'll eventually have to wade through to get to any real comments.
The blog post comments seem to break up the conversation and make it impossible to follow. The first post inspired a few excellent blog posts, but If I want to respond to those posts, do I do it on the individual sites? On my own blog? Both? With the system as it is currently set up, you seem to lose the conversational aspect that I think can really make a comment thread interesting.
Finally, I don't have a blog. I know I'm probably in the minority, as far as Cognition's audience is concerned, but I still feel a bit slighted that there is really no option for me to leave a comment without having to start my own blog to do so.