DailyTech - Google Targets Facebook with Its Own Third-Party Commenting Platform

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Internet Google Targets Facebook with Its Own Third-Party Commenting Platform
Shane McGlaun (Blog) - March 27, 2012 11:53 AM

11 comment(s) - last by P-Air.. on Apr 5 at 12:30 AM

Google commenting system expected to have deep ties to Google+

If you’re an avid web surfer, you have undoubtedly noticed that many websites use the third-party Facebook commenting platform. Whether or not you like your comments on websites posted to your Facebook profile, the commenting system is very popular.

Google is said to be ready to launch its own third-party commenting platform to rival Facebook's offering.

The technology blogger named Saud Al-Hawawi with Tech-WD reported yesterday that the comment platform, which was previously unannounced, was talked about at the Google event called G-Saudi Arabia. The commenting system from Google will apparently have deep ties to its Google+ social network, which is no surprise.

The platform is also expected to support indexing in Google search results. Google is certainly hoping that the commenting platform will lead to more users for Google+, which hasn't been adopted as well as Google had initially hoped.

There are other third-party commenting platforms being used around the web such as Disqus and Livefyre. Disqus is popular on many technology sites around the internet and is often particularly rife with spam that Disqus has a very difficult time stopping. If Google's third-party commenting system is secure and offers an easy way for website owners to deal with spam comments it could prove to be very popular.

The Next Web also notes that vanity URLs are soon coming to Google+. Currently, users of Google+ have to go to third-party systems to get vanity URLs. That particular feature has been known to be on the to-do list at Google for a while.

Source: The Next Web

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This will probably be better than Facebook

By ryanv12 on 3/27/2012 1:01:19 PM , Rating: 3

Even if this is just a Facebook commenting clone, I can see it being fairly successful. I work at Disqus, and we've been adement on maintaining is a balance between a persistent, accountable identity and anonymity. Facebook offers very little in the way of anonymity, which puts off a lot of people from commenting, or posting controversial comments.

I have a feeling that the average person's Google account doesn't have many significant connections (unlike Facebook) and it'll mean more people are willing to comment using it. This means that the relative lack of relevance that Google+ has as a social network will probably help their commenting solution.

If they can offer even more options to make it a "true" third party commenting platform, they have the opportunity to do even better. It'll be interesting to see what they do announce.

RE: This will probably be better than Facebook

By robertgu on 3/27/2012 1:05:08 PM , Rating: 3

Considering Google's desire to have people use real names for Google+ and the fact that their new commenting system will have deep ties to Google+ as mentioned in the article. I would venture to guess this new system will have considerably less anonymity than your employer's system (Disqus) and I would debate it would have less anonymity than even Facebook's current system.

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RE: This will probably be better than Facebook

By Boze on 3/27/2012 4:59:09 PM , Rating: 3

Good... looking forward to it then.

I'm tired of people hiding behind anonymity on the Internet. If you have something to say, grab your junk and say it with conviction or keep your mouth shut.

Free speech also includes having to live with the remarks you make, and I have no problem living with mine.

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RE: This will probably be better than Facebook

By NellyFromMA on 3/28/2012 11:17:43 AM , Rating: 2

This sounds almost analogous to Linux and OS X being more secure operating systems because they are less targetted by hackers becasue they are less wide-spread....

It's only true until it's actually useful...

Doesn't make sense to me..

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RE: This will probably be better than Facebook

By Murst on 3/27/2012 11:31:09 PM , Rating: 2

I'm currently using Disqus for my blog, and I still get a ton of spam, even when using Akismet as an additional filter.

If Google comes out with something that's as easy to use as Disqus but has good spam filtering, I could see a ton of blogs switch very quickly. Spam on blog comments is really annoying...

I'm not sure how applicable Postini would be to filter spam comments, but it should at least be a good start - its probably the best email spam filter out there.

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RE: This will probably be better than Facebook

By ryanv12 on 3/28/2012 1:12:37 PM , Rating: 2

Get in touch with me about the spam, we do report spam trends to Impermium (who does our default filtering), and we have some smarter tools in the works. Naturally the larger networks get targeted more by spammers, and we even see Facebook comments encountering similar attacks. I imagine if Google+'s commenting platform gains traction, it'll be put to the test as well.

You can reach me at: ryan -at- disqus -dot- com

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RE: This will probably be better than Facebook

By P-Air on 4/5/2012 12:30:12 AM , Rating: 2

Murst, definitely let Ryan know if you're having spam issues, as I work with Impermium and we show a very low incidence of spam for DISQUS, so if you're showing some outlier activity we'd like to know about it and the folks at DISQUS are very good about alerting us when such anomalies are happening.

Separately, let me agree with you that Postini was indeed a great company and Google got an awesome team and tech when they acquired that company. Our team is well acquainted with them as we came out of the email spam world also, and I can tell you that the problems there are very different than with "social spam". For one, on the Web 100s or 1000s of bots can send few messages, versus in email where it's few servers sending 1000s and 10,000s messages at a time. As well, spam issues are not simply dealt with using the semantics of a message. Actually, solutions depending on that alone are becoming more and more ineffective. Have you seen the sort of reasonable response in a comment that suggests that you follow a related link?...except that related link is to a spam site or malware? Social spam is very tricky and you need to take a broader and more encompassing view of the problem, which we do at Impermium. While it's unlikely that anyone will knock out 100% of he spam out there, I can say that we have been performing in the high 90s% for several clients.

Google may evolve their service to eventually deal with social spam well, but it will take them time and a different approach than just applying Postini's tech to blog comments.

Oh, and one other thing, applying Akismet as an additional filter to DISQUS is not likely to yield you much gain, if any, given that DISQUS already outperforms the spam filtering that an Akismet-only solution might yield. No dis' on Akismet, just saying that DISQUS is already outperforming it on its clients' sites.

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Any I the only one...

By abscode on 3/27/2012 1:56:44 PM , Rating: 4

Any I the only one who doesn't want any commenting system to be tied to any social platform? I really hate this trend.

Commenting in a specific micro-community (like here, DT) is valuable to users, but I don't see the value (to users) in including targeted comments to their general social network. Of course I understand why FB and the like want it, but it seems users should be rejecting it. Maybe I'm more sensitive to becoming an advertising commodity than most people.