Facebook Dramatically Upgrades Comments Plugin Features

As part of a subtle change, Facebook has made a number of upgrades to their comments plugin. The changes include a new voting feature, the inclusion of a user’s network (their work place or location), as well as the percentage of likes a comment gets on a thread, and most significantly: threaded comments.

As the image below depicts, the comments are dramatically improved. So what are all of the new features? We’ll break down each one below. Currently there are four core upgrades:

1. User network – While Facebook has technically removed the “networks” feature, comments will now display a user’s location, school they are attending, or company that they are a part of depending on what details they’ve entered in their profile.
3. Comment voting – Another significant feature is comment voting. While it doesn’t appear as though comments are prioritized, users can provide feedback and rate a comment as either positive or negative. That vote is then used to calculate the next feature.
4. Feedback rating & comment count – The feedback rating is the percentage of votes that were positive. If a comment received no feedback, there won’t be a rating. Unfortunately we have yet to determine whether or not this will become a global feedback rating as a mechanism for preventing spam, however it’s pretty obvious that having a higher feedback rating is a good thing. Additionally, a comment count will show how many comments a user has contributed to a thread
5. Threaded comments – This is huge! As far as we can remember, comments were previously displayed in a single thread, however now you reply to specific comments to create sub-conversations.

While we’re not quite sure how far Facebook is intending to take this comments platform, this is definitely a significant upgrade to what was previously an extremely basic commenting system. By adding features there’s no doubt that Facebook will be able to increase adoption. We’re waiting to see what additional improvements Facebook has in store for their commenting feature (such as, will the company launch a more robust moderation tool?). What would you like to see Facebook add to this new comments plugin?