Two separate incidents I noticed recently illustrate a new peeve of mine – the lack of conversation on blogs lately.

1) Twitter comments about blog posts. It is great in the sense that the comments are broadcast to a much larger audience, but the conversation is short ~ and short-lived. Not only are readers trying to make their point in 140 characters (or across several Tweets, another peeve) but those points are lost in just a few days. Instead of a ‘group’ conversation on the post, you have several one-to-one exchanges so some good points get lost in the plethora of tweets flying past.

2) Subscription fees for commenting. I know several blogs that require the creation of an account before you can comment. I have resisted that in most cases because I see no reason for me to subscribe when I am perfectly willing to put my info right there in the comment fields. However, for a couple of blogs I went ahead and took the leap. One blog I used to read went to requiring you to create an account, log in each time, enter a captcha, then the comment was sent to moderation. I had no desire to jump through that many hoops just to converse with the author so I not only stopped commenting, I stopped even visiting. This evening I visited a new blog that is requiring a subscription fee: $3.47 per month to comment. Are there a lot of people willing to pay over $40 a year to contribute to someone else’s blog?

The pay-to-say blog just answered me (on Twitter LOL) saying that the fee will keep the conversation civil and I should try the free 30 day trial.
Hmmm….

• If the only way you can keep your commenters civil is by charging them, perhaps you aren’t inspiring the right kind of discussion.
• There is no way I am ever going to pay for the “privilege” of commenting on a blog site, so why would I spend 30 days starting conversations I won’t be around to follow?

I’m happy that Twitter allows people to spread the word to a much larger audience, I just miss the days of long comment threads.

BTW: I have seen Disqus* on many sites, which allows “signing in” to comment with one of your existing social media accounts; Twitter, Yahoo, Facebook… and keeps track of all your comments across multiple sites. The best of both worlds.

* I realize there are others that offer similar functionality. I reference Disqus because it seems to be the best and most widely used.

UPDATE: From the comments, a differing view. See his full post on Ricochet here