Why Don’t You Comment @Mashable?

Maybe they don’t feel their opinion, thoughts, words are listened to.

threaded comments? a more friendly layout? nice community - who knows! I think mashable to me looks mre childish? if thats the right word!

Interesting observation……you would think with all the roundups and top ten lists they have over there would create a lot of ticked off people

I’ve never commented on Mashable, and they only reason I can think of is that they have plenty of great content, but they don’t really break any big news…….just a guess.

That is kind of what I was thinking, people comment on original content more often then replayed information, maybe its to many people coming across the information elsewhere first?

TechCrunch + Mashable + most other blogs of that ilk resulted in waaaaay too much duplication in my reader. Dumped pretty much except Arrington. LiveCrunch is still in my reader just because of posts like this one.

While they do provide some useful information with press releases and their top whatever lists there isn’t much to say other than “ok, thanks”. I also don’t think it’s a very inviting “community”.

Generally because Mashable has been going downhill.

very keen observation. Even i wud like to know the reason. This happens not only to big sites but also upcomming ones too. You might expect a lot of comments for a particular post u think is great but u end up having 1 or 2 which some time sucks..anyways..good topic to be discussed on…I am digging it!

I don’t hesitate to leave a comment wherever the urge to comment hits, unless the blog owner makes me jump though hoops by requiring me to make an account just to comment on his blog…or something like a broken comment form or screwball captcha that doesn’t think 4+3=7, insults my intelligence and sucks my comment into a black hole. In that case it’s not likely I’ll ever attempt to comment on that blog, again.

Now, where does the urge hit? Where there is content that provokes thought, where there is evidence of intelligent human life that would appreciate the interaction and would understand the value of my 2 cents, and where there is evidence that the author is reading what commentors say and responds to it. I’ll communicate where I think communication is possible.

Sites like Mashable, Boing Boing, Neatorama, etc…they are not thought provoking blogs. Actually, I don’t consider them blogs at all. They are more like road maps and signs that point the direction to where the real content is. It is at those other sites that I am more likely to comment. After all, I don’t talk to road signs or maps…I talk to humans with a brain & thoughts of their own.

So if you want comments from me (and people like me), express yourself and add something valuable to the internet. Show you have a brain & thoughts of your own. It’s ok to link to other sites that have something interesting, but tell me why you think I should pay attention to it and what your thoughts and feelings were about it. And respond to comments you receive to show you care about communicating with your readers.

Talk to me like a human and not point like a road sign.

I think if you remember that, then if you ever get to be as big as those A-list road sign “blogs”, you won’t have a problem with comments. Written like it’s coming from a human, your content will draw people in and force comments out of them.

Unless I feel very strong about a post, I won’t comment. Just like good content draws me in to read it, the comments need to draw me in and make me what to respond to them and carry on a dialog.

Also, knowing the person who wrote the post, from the various social networks, can make me want to comment just like I am doing here.

Don’t misunderstand my feelings on captchas…I don’t mind them and I understand their purpose. What I mind are ones that don’t work and suck my comments into a black hole. There are some buggy ones out there that hate me (or my browser).

As far as what I meant about being human and having some thoughts & feelings to share, I wasn’t really referring to being conversational like ProBlogger.

I’ll give you this as a technology example:

Remember when every site was reporting on the Hello Kitty antivirus?

Which of the following posts seems like it was written by a human and which looks like it was made by some sort of mindless bot?

http://www.kittyhell.com/2008/07/03/hello-kitty-antivirus-and-firewall-software/
http://gizmodo.com/5022172/found-in-china-hello-kitty-antivirus-and-firewall-software

Which of those posts would YOU comment on, based purely on the post’s content?

This blogger did a much better job than Gizmodo did: http://www.popgadget.net/2008/07/hello_kitty_ant.php

And after all your readers have seen those, and millions similar to the Gizmodo one, what is left to post about it, without seeming repetitive, boring, and unoriginal?

How about this? http://cranialsoup.blogspot.com/2008/08/barbie-wants-to-code.html

Lots of ways to present the same content, without being anywhere near the same, by just adding your own thoughts & feelings, and even if people have heard about it already, your post can still be worth paying attention to and commenting on. And plenty of ways to seem more human than road signs like Gizmodo.