This Animal New York article by Joel Johnson has been hitting all the usual bloggy suspects this week. It suggests that comments are bad for business. Facebook and Tumblr and Twitter and other social media has taken the place of the online community-building that blog comments used to foster, Johnson argues. (Although people keep trying to make content even more social.) Further, he makes three major points: “Most comments are terrible,” “Comments don’t make any money,” and “the people who actually read comments are a small fraction of one percent of [many sites’] entire readership.”

I’m sure there must be some kind of argument to be made for comments, but I can’t think of any right now. If you have a reason for comments to exist, leave them in the comments below!

7 replies on “Are Comments Bad for Business?”

  1. Good content begets good comments. Then again, as I glance to the right, I am not shocked to see that the most commented on Blogtown posts are mostly junk.

    I, for one, support the idea of heavy-handed moderation. Meaning–even if a comment is not obscene, abusive, or spam–if it’s a terrible comment then it shouldn’t be posted. I am tired of reading comments by people who don’t spell check or provide anything new to a thread.

    If your comment is rejected, step your game up and try again. (Granted most of my past comments would probably be rejected and that’s fine with me.)

    For a perfect example of why comment sections should be moderated more strictly, see this craptacular comment thread: http://blogtown.portlandmercury.com/Blogto…

    For the love of God give me one good comment on any subject and I’ll read it; and stop allowing the garbage to pile up.

  3. Begging to be censored is pretty sad. Blogtown gets such a paltry number of comments anyway…a thread of 31 comments freaks out Chundy? Christ.

  5. The comments damn near ruin the Hipstertown blog. Especially the ones in all caps by that nerdy little douche you all love to fawn over.

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