Now You Can Use Facebook To Power Comments on Your Site

Last week Facebook released a new social plugin that web publishers can use to power comments on their websites. Here are two benefits of using it, according to the official Facebook Comments page (which is where you can get the plugin as well):

Social Relevance: Comments Box uses social signals to surface the highest quality comments for each user. Comments are ordered to show users the most relevant comments from friends, friends of friends, and the most liked or active discussion threads, while comments marked as spam are hidden from view.

Distribution: Comments are easily shared with friends or with people who like your Page on Facebook. If a user leaves the “Post to Facebook” box checked when she posts a comment, a story appears on her friends’ News Feed indicating that she’s made a comment on your website, which will also link back to your site.

Some large websites and blogs are already testing the plugin, including TechCrunch. In fact they started using it right after the official release, and today the have a post summarizing the results and feeling so far. You can read it here: Facebook Comments Have Silenced The Trolls — But Is It Too Quiet? (by visiting the post you’ll be able to see the Facebook comments in action too).

In the past couple of years we have seen at least half a dozen comment systems and plugins emerging on the web, but I don’t think any of them became the de facto standard. Facebook Comments might.

Why? Because the previous plugins and platforms only offered small benefits to the web publishers (e.g., easier logins, connection with Twitter, etc), while the Facebook plugin has two big advantages which might swing the pendulum in its favor: a) it reduces the number of trolls around because people need a real identity to comment and, most importantly, b) using it might actually increase your traffic because every time someone leaves a comment on your site that comment will also be published on the user’s Facebook stream.

Have you guys spotted the Facebook Comments plugin around? Are you considering to use it on your site?

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Are You Missing The TED Presentations?

Don’t know what TED is? Well, you should! TED stands for Technology, Entertainment and Design, and traditionally it was an annual conference held in Monterey, California. Now there are more conferences in different places around the world, but the objective remains the same: to talk about ideas worth spreading.

Here is a quotation from Wikipedia explaining how it works:

TED was founded in 1984 as a one-off event, and the conference was held annually from 1990 in Monterey, California. TED’s early emphasis was largely technology and design, consistent with a Silicon Valley center of gravity. The events are now held in Long Beach and Palm Springs in the U.S. as well as in Europe and Asia, offering live streaming of the talks. They address an increasingly wide range of topics within the research and practice of science and culture. The speakers are given a maximum of 18 minutes to present their ideas in the most innovative and engaging ways they can. Past presenters include Bill Clinton, Jane Goodall, Malcolm Gladwell, Al Gore, Gordon Brown, Richard Dawkins, Bill Gates, Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, and many Nobel Prize winners. TED’s current curator is the British former computer journalist and magazine publisher Chris Anderson.

Getting a ticket to attend a live TED conference is pretty tough and expensive from what I heard. But the organizers are not in for the money (at least not only for it!), and they make all the presentations available at the TED.com website. Currently there are over 900 presentations available, on all sorts of fields and topics.

If you haven’t watched a TED presentation ever (or lately) I urge you to go to the website, find a topic you like and watch it. The videos aren’t very long, and I am sure you’ll get amused and inspired by the ideas discussed there.

Next week I’ll try to post a list with my favorite presentations, so stay tuned.

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Want A Website with Millions of Monthly Pageviews?

Who doesn’t, right?

While I won’t be giving one, hopefully the tip I am going to share below will put you in the right path for building your own.

The tip is pretty simple: take a look at other websites that already achieved that (i.e., reached millions of monthly page views) and analyzed how they achieved it. Things you could analyze include:

• What niche they are focusing on.
• What kind of design they use.
• What kind of content or service they offer to visitors.
• What methods they use to generate traffic.
• What monetization methods they are using.
• What strategies they are using to convert first time visitors into loyal readers.

At this point you might be thinking: “OK, I’ll do that, but where exactly will i find websites that already reached millions of monthly pageviews?”

One resource I like to use for this purpose is the BuySellAds.com marketplace. You’ll basically be able to browse across hundreds of websites that are selling ads. The most popular websites on the marketplace get anywhere from 1 up to 20 million monthly page views. And that cool thing is that we are talking about real page views, because the BuySellAds traffic tracker is pretty accurate (I tested it myself).

You can also filter your research by topic, keyword and so on. I am sure you’ll get some ideas using this strategy, to give it a try.

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Is Your Blog iPhone Ready?

I am quite stubborn when it comes to adopting new trends, and one I didn’t pay too much attention to initially was mobile surfing. Over time I started to notice that more and more people were using mobile devices to browse the web, making it an aspect most web publishers should consider.

Daily Blog Tips already has a free iPhone app (search for the name on iTunes or on the App Store and you’ll find it), but I am always looking for new ways to make my content available on other platforms. If you are the same you should check an article from Next iPhone News on this topic.

It basically lists 5 ways to make your blog available on the iPhone. As you might expect it includes a WordPress plugin to create an mobile version of your website, free services to make apps for your blog and so on. One tips surprised me, though. Did you know that you can create an icon for your blog that will be used whenever iPhone and iPod Touch users bookmark it or create a link on their homescreen? It’s much like a favicon, but instead of being used on your visitor browser it will be used on his iPhone. Pretty cool huh?

Anyway you can check the full article here: 5 Ways To Make Your Blog Available on the iPhone.

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Where Do You Host Your Site, And How Do You Like It?

Choosing the right web hosting company for your blog/website is quite important, as if you go with a not-so-reliable one you might end up with slow loading times, frequent hacks, software problems and so on.

But how exactly do you evaluate hosting companies? Trusting information you see around the web is tricky, as most people are affiliates for one company or another, and they want you to sign-up so they can earn a commission.

That is why I figured it could be useful to get the opinions directly from the people hosting blogs and websites (i.e., our readers), where no affiliate commissions are involved.

So here’s my question for you: Where do you host your site or blog, and how do you like it? Please answer it with a comment below.

I’ll compile the answers in a list and publish the results over the coming weeks. Thanks in advance for everyone who will participate.

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