In my first entry here on Flip The Media, I thought I’d share some thoughts I’ve had about automatically refreshing comments within a blog. I write a fan-site/blog about the Pittsburgh Steelers for Sports Blog Nation, the world’s largest independent network of sports blogs. The network was started by Markos Moulitas, whom you may or may not know from his pioneering political blog Daily Kos. Suffice it to say, when I was recruited to join the network, I immediately signed on, eager to be a part of any brave new journey Markos was leading into the vast wildnerness that is the new digital media landscape.
Kos Media, including Sports Blog Nation and all its individual sites, originally was powered by a blogging platform called Scoop, a collaborative media application. Unlike WordPress or Blogger, Scoop facilitated community participation intuitively. The main feature in Scoop that was highlighted on our sites network wide that did so was the ‘diaries’ (now called ‘fan posts’ to better reflect the ‘sports’ ethos of our blogs) function, which allowed readers of the sites to post their own thoughts about whatever subject they chose. The site’s readership could then comment and respond to that ‘diary’ just like they might with a front-page post by the site’s primary author. It gave readers a sense of ownership in the site, and encouraged them to be activtely engaged in the respective site’s niche topic. For sports blogs written by mere passive fans like myself, without a press credential of course, this additional member-generated content was huge. It provided me and my readership with extra thoughts/opinions, links to relevant stories, etc. Because I wrote, edited, and managed the site in my free time, any extra help was more than welcomed.
As I digress.
My company brought on Jim Bankoff not long ago. He was a former Executive VP of Programming and Products at AOL, and an Emmy winning producer of AOL’s broadcast of Live 8. He also helped launch the swarmy but immensely popular TMZ.com, and is on the board or serves in a senior advisory position for Qloud, Audible, and Providence Equity Partners, the world’s leading firm in communications, media and entertainment investments. Jim decided to join the team at about the same time that the network was working behind the scenes on a ground-breaking new redesign that would set the bar even higher for blogs looking to enhance the user experience. Bankoff would tell you that the network architect’s pioneering and visionary ideas convinced him that this was a project worthy of his time and commitments. Obviously when us bloggers heard the news, we were stoked. Pretty much everything this guy has touched has turned to gold, and it seemed obvious (to me at least) that he had left AOL to venture out and participate in endeavors he found worthwhile and potentially profitable. That he had chosen us was very exciting.
In the interest of time and unnecessary boredom, I’ll skip the lion’s share of what the redesign entailed and what Bankoff has brought to the table and simply highlight one feature that has taken all of our sites’ ability to build vocal, growing communities to an entirely new level (I will mention briefly that he has implemented a bunch of social media tools on our sites to help grow our traffic network wide). That feature is the auto-refreshing comment feature that’s now deployed in all of SBN’s sites, including mine.
Last Sunday night, the Pittsburgh Steelers played a nationally televised game. Being that the telecast started at around 5:30 PST, or 8:30 EST (a sizeable % of Steelers fans do of course live near the Eastern Seaboard), a large portion of my readership was home watching the game with little responsibility preoccupying them as they awaited the start of another work week the following morning. So, many logged on to my site to particpate in what I call ‘Gameday Open Threads’. The premise being that all are welcome and encouraged to join me at the site while we watch the game, leaving comments about the action as we go. In years past while on Scoop, which was still undeniably conducive to community participation, a game thread might get 70-100 comments. The main complaint users had was that prior to the redesign, users had to click refresh on their browsers every so often to see what their fellow fans and blog participants were saying in the comments section. This is a universal reality in most all blog platforms. It’s no big deal really, but if you are trying to create a ‘chat room’ atmosphere, or better yet in my case, a ‘bar-room’ atmosphere amongst online friends, it’s far preferrable if your buddies’ comments just suddenly appear before you, without you having to continually refresh your page.
It’s worth noting that in the case of an NFL game, the action can happen rather rapidly, and many people don’t want to waste too much time during the limited 16 game schedule they get to enjoy each year as fans fiddling with their computer. These are, after all, often times blue-collar football fans from the heartland. Less is more when it comes to incentivizing many of my readers to engage in social media, so eliminating any step is a good thing, So, when you can just plop the laptop down on your lap and casually kibbitz with fellow blog members, it’s hardly a nuisance and in fact quite enjoyable, as many have testified to me. Furthermore, for those of us, myself included, who enjoy the team but don’t live in Pittsburgh, congregating at the site provides a feeling of belonging and enjoyment that might otherwise be hard to obtain. For me personally, who is the engine behind the scenes that tries to facilitate this congregation, I can not help but smile when I see readers from dozens of states and even all across the world (we have community members on 5 of the 6 continents) all yell, cheer and curse on the site as we enjoy a two hour diversion from our normal daily lives.
In conclusion, I’ll humbly mention that the implementation of this auto-refresh commenting system has led to amazing commmunity participation on my blog so far during the 2008 NFL season. For the past two weeks, my gameday threads have each exceeded 1300 comments. When I began doing this four years ago, I would be ecstatic if I got 10 responses to what I thought was a discussion worthy post. 1,300 is hard to fathom compared to those days. Lots of legwork and persistent year-round consistency both creating content and engaging in community building efforts have helped contribute to these developments, but a large part of the credit belongs to the architects of the network’s new platform, which really is the industry standard for community participation in the world of blogging.
I have no doubt that other platforms and websites that have comment capabilities will eventually follow suit, so be sure to keep your eye out for sites and platforms that begin to do so into the future. They sure add a lot to the blogging and community building experience that we all strive for when starting a blog of our own.
Interesting (albeit long!) post. I’m really keen to hear more about social media and sports because it seems to be one of the more viable applications out there right now. We’re potentially looking at doing a large MCDM symposium next spring, which could include Markos.
I’d be happy to try to get him to come, same with Bankoff. Both are great.