Most of your visitors don’t leave comments on your site. That goes without saying. But one interesting related question is will they take some other sort of action. Can you entice them to participate in a dialogue on your site by offering an easier way to initiate conversations than diving right away into the chaotic commentosphere?
A quick look at a two websites suggests that users are more willing to interact on publisher web sites than the usual absence of comments suggests.
On Download.com’s blog, The Download Blog, there is an article about Google taking Chrome out of beta. The article accumulated a whopping 100 comments in the few days since it was published. However, in the same amount of time, over 10,000 people answered a Polldaddy poll that accompanied the article. For every commenter, there were 100 people who clicked the poll. These are people who were moved enough to take an action based on their opinion. In that moment of motivation, Download.com lost an opportunity to engage them further by offering another simple way of increasing their participation.
In another example, the celebrity site Oceanup.com posts pictures of the sisters of famous actresses with the question: who is the cutest? While only 60 readers left comments with their thoughts, over 18,000 people weighed in on a poll that accompanied the post. In this case, 300 times more readers answered the poll than left a comment. Among these 18,000 people who took initiative to express themselves, how many more would have taken another simple step if one was offered?
The Qwidget was designed to capitalize on these missed opportunities.
Note: To all the bloggers signing up to test the Qwidget, I apologize for not being able to release it you sooner. We are fixing a few stability/usability issues before opening up our doors.
(ed. note: This is part of an ongoing series of posts about issues in politics, entertainment, media, business, technology, etc. that do not necessarily have anything to do with the Qwidget. The posts are meant to showcase how the Qwidget can be used with any type of blog content.)
Best-selling author and champion of alternative medicine, Deepak Chopra has made quite a bit of news in recent days. He has appeared on Larry King, been accused of anti-Americanism by the Wall Street Journal, publicly feuded with Sean Hannity and appeared on Bill O’Reilly’s Fox News show. All of this because he made some seemingly uncontroversial statements about how America’s recent foreign policy has inspired some people around the world to resent it.
Deepak has also recently begun asking whoever will listen to take a vow of non-violence. But this is not your grandfather’s peace treaty. The vow, as he calls it, involves banishing violence not just from your actions but from your thoughts and your speech.
(ed. note: This is part of an ongoing series of posts about issues in politics, entertainment, media, business, technology, etc. that do not necessarily have anything to do with the Qwidget. The posts are meant to showcase how the Qwidget can be used with any type of blog content.)
The use of extremely loud music to aid in military interrogations in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay is well known at this point. It’s also hardly a new practice. Former Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega allegedly surrendered to US troops because of the loud music they beamed into his hiding spot, the Vatican Embassy. However, a number of musicians have recently announced a campaign with the British human rights organization Reprieve to end this practice, which they say is torture.
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So far, they have have established an online petition and announced that participating musicians will hold a few moments of silence at concerts and festivals. One can imagine, however, that this initiative will quickly expand. Expect more traditional forms of protest in the near future as well as perhaps a legal challenge demanding royalties. Here’s the petition if you’re interested.
This issue is obviously going to split audiences at these concerts and could lead to some intense confrontations. It’s already splitting musicians, some of whom gladly approve of the use of their songs in such situations. Stevie Benton, whose band Drowning Pool, recorded one of the interrogators’ favorites, “Bodies” had this to say about the controversy: “People assume we should be offended that somebody in the military thinks our song is annoying enough that played over and over it can psychologically break someone down. I take it as an honor to think that perhaps our song could be used to quell another 9/11 attack or something like that.”
(ed. note: This is part of an ongoing series of posts about issues in politics, entertainment, media, business, technology, etc. that do not necessarily have anything to do with the Qwidget. I’m just posting about them to showcase how the Qwidget can be used with any type of blog content.)
My college pal Frank Lesser, a writer for the Colbert Report, sent out an email today that started like this: “So, I jumped on the bandwagon and made a vampire film.” Pretty hilarious. Here’s the film.
Besides just enjoying the film because vampires rule (duh), I was pretty excited to realize halfway through the credits that, in addition to Frank, two other friends of mine worked on it. Especially shocking was the fact that the music was done by a long lost friend from high school, Jonathan Zalben, with whom I took a three year advanced math course. How on earth do those two know each other?
I go to a website and read an article. Man, that was really great. I’d like to comment and ask the author a question. I scroll down… 384 comments. Ugh. Screw this.
His post goes on to suggest a great way to help readers sort through the “comment wasteland” that inevitably follows posts on popular blogs: Milemarkers. Jason’s concept involves bloggers or some type of community manager reading through the comments and entering a “milemarker” type comment that would highlight important questions raised up until that point. These would be graphically distinguished from other comments and would link back to the original questions posed by readers with links to relevant responses and other blog posts. Milemarkers would thereby help readers easily scan comments, picking out only the most valuable contributions.
Example of a Milemarker
Jason concludes with a thought that speaks to everything that went into building the Qwidget: “Good conversation can happen, but we need to give people the tools to make it a useful experience.” I think Jason’s idea is a fantastic way to make the commenting experience better. I would love to see Disqus, IntenseDebate, SezWho or JS-Kit incorporate it ASAP.
However, I think it, like those services, will mostly appeal to those of us who already leave the occasional blog comment. In other words, it appeals to an infinitesimally small fraction of web users. As Jason himself puts it, “I only have so much available cognitive time I want to invest before participating in a conversation.”
One good question to consider is: For the average user, how much of that limited cognitive time is spent on thinking of a way to begin participating? Just as often as I see a glut of comments and click away, I read a great article that makes me think and, with lack of immediate inspiration to say something back, I move on. In that quick instant, bloggers and web publishers in general squander an opportunity to capture greater and greater levels of reader participation. I liken it to this common situation: You’re at a party. You see someone that looks intriguing or you overhear an interesting comment. And before you can think of some cool way to open up a conversation with that person, the window of opportunity closes and you move on.
With the Qwidget, our primary goal is to make the first move towards participation a baby step.
Stories, Updates and Thoughts From the Qwidget Makers
What's the Qwidget
The Qwidget is a tool that publishers and bloggers install on their sites to make it easier for readers to engage in dialogue around their content.
Our mission
With the Qwidget, we are building a cross-web dialogue platform. We aim to make the web a better place for meeting new people and starting conversations about the issues and content that interest people.
This blog will tell that story. It's written by Mike DiBenedetto, the manager of product development for the Qwidget.
On Download.com’s blog, The Download Blog, there is an article about Google taking Chrome out of beta. The article accumulated a whopping 100 comments in the few days since it was published. However, in the same amount of time, over 10,000 people answered a Polldaddy poll that accompanied the article. For every commenter, there were 100 people who clicked the poll. These are people who were moved enough to take an action based on their opinion. In that moment of motivation, Download.com lost an opportunity to engage them further by offering another simple way of increasing their participation.
Best-selling author and champion of alternative medicine, Deepak Chopra has made quite a bit of news in recent days. He has appeared on Larry King, been accused of anti-Americanism by the Wall Street Journal, publicly feuded with Sean Hannity and appeared on Bill O’Reilly’s Fox News show. All of this because he made some seemingly uncontroversial statements about how America’s recent foreign policy has inspired some people around the world to resent it.
The use of 
This issue is obviously going to split audiences at these concerts and could lead to some intense confrontations. It’s already splitting musicians, some of whom gladly approve of the use of their songs in such situations. Stevie Benton, whose band Drowning Pool, recorded one of the interrogators’ favorites, “Bodies” had this to say about the controversy: “People assume we should be offended that somebody in the military thinks our song is annoying enough that played over and over it can psychologically break someone down. I take it as an honor to think that perhaps our song could be used to quell another 9/11 attack or something like that.”
Stories, Updates and Thoughts From the Qwidget Makers
The Qwidget is a tool that publishers and bloggers install on their sites to make it easier for readers to engage in dialogue around their content.
With the Qwidget, we are building a cross-web dialogue platform. We aim to make the web a better place for meeting new people and starting conversations about the issues and content that interest people.
