Comment on ESPN.com....through facebook

Our web people are panicking because our web traffic has taken a hit over the past three months, since we went to Facebook-login commenting. Have any of your papers taken traffic hits, and how long did it take to bounce back?

 

This is the biggest cost of moving to Facebook comments. Page views are going to take a big hit. People refreshing the page constantly to see what the next comment is going to say is eliminated.

A couple of papers I follow have done this and their comments have been essentially reduced to zero. I'm not saying that's the case for all publications, but I believe that's what the majority are experiencing.

The people I've talked at those papers are more relieved they don't have to monitor the comments than bothered they're losing page views.

 

I'd believe that trading a little traffic (actual comments and the refreshed page views that come with them are small potatoes in the grand scheme of things) for the ability to market to verified users was a no-brainer in the never-ending quest of the next great revenue stream. That the overall product is spared some, if not most, of its most vile "user contributions" is an added bonus. In the end, it wouldn't surprise me that this was a joint venture of sorts between ESPN and Facebook, as the two companies mine the data of users who frequent content of their favorite sports and teams on ESPN's sites, then couple that info with all the users' "likes" and "check-ins" and whatnot on Facebook. That's advertising gold.

 

Now you're going to tell me I don't really have a date Friday with Lacey Underall.

 

Yeah, funny this switch takes place on the same day the mother ship rehires Captain Ahab. Not a coincidence at all.