Subtitle: How Facebook (and/or Other Connect Platforms) Can Help Remove Anonymity in Comments

Not speaking for my parent company on this, but I think having to register for site commenting — at least on media sites — is likely doomed to the internet archive of old practices.

Historically, there were two main reasons to require registration. They include the ability to:

1. Help a user track their comments and activity so as to provide support for said activities, and
2. Collect demographic information to sell against the combination of activity and demographics.

Taking a look ahead at these two practices reveals why there’s a changing future.

1. Helping Users Track Themselves

Online readers love to comment on stories, sparking debates on news sites since at least 2005 (here’s a 2006 article as well as one from 2009, but Google searches bring up a ton of opinions).

The main challenge to comments is not technical, but the issue could be assumed to start there. You need to have a unique identifier to separate user A from user B, even in anonymity. Easy enough, all registration systems do this simple task of differentiation very well.

What registrations do lack is authenticity and verification, which is something Facebook does EXTREMELY well. If I sign into Facebook with a name other than my own, there is communal pressure to rectify the wrong. Yes, there are exceptions, but many more people sign up for Facebook with their correct info because there is benefit in doing so that can’t be matched on media sites. And that benefit of connections, as well as scale, results in more accurate info.

So, one could assume this platform gives the right registration basis. As social media guru (and Charlottean) Jason Keath recently wrote of Facebook’s new features:

“They have leveraged their large network as a value add for other services.”

Jason initially applies this with phone application extensions, but the network effect simply applies without qualification. If you can plug into any network — such as Facebook Connect — that you use daily into the other activities you participate in, you will. It’s called convenience, and people make this choice every day in many activities… CDs are higher quality than almost all mp3s, e.g., but how many people do you see exercising with portable CD players any more?

Doing the convenient thing for audience members also solves other internal publisher issues. The platform takes away a technical support infrastructure component for media organizations, which can be intense in terms of managing change. People who manage separate systems can focus more on local content and platforms, which drive more audience.

This brings me to…

2. Demographic Data

There are literally hundreds of ways to mine online user data, and the purpose of this discussion is not to draw attention to privacy issues (just know you’re not private online ever and move on).

In an attempt to maintain anonymity, however, people often register at sites like ESPN.com with fake names and demographic info (which ties nicely to the above point as well).

What many online users don’t realize is that tracking user behavior online has become so good that the demographic info from registration entry is almost to the point of unneeded. With targeting and histories from the top two ad-serving internet companies now ALSO being leveraged outside of their networks (a la Facebook), display advertising will be more targeted than ever. And registration isn’t even needed!

For those who say, “Well, e-mail is still important!” to demographic info– you’re right. And if you as a content provider give users value for their address, the authenticated and verified user will still give you their e-mail for that purpose.

To quote Jason again:

“It makes the vast amount of information within one’s friend network more accessible and more relevant. These are keys to valuable consumer engagement.”

And what else would marketers want?

Conclusion/Open Questions

Tying into trusted systems for registration data takes away a technical support structure for media organizations, makes comments more authentic and verifiable, and makes online life more manageable for media users. Doing the same tie-in — but usually with different partners — accomplishes the same for the revenue-related parts of site-specfic registration.

While it’s true there are still people who do not engage in social networking, more engagement online will require registration or verification in some capacity. Anonymity is enough of an issue with managing community that the business model will require it (and the most successful communities drive this user behavior already). The price of entry for engagement would be lower if done by a trusted third-party for those readers who hesitate to engage yet another registration system.

Also, we can’t ignore that now or eventually there could be the issue of tying payment to anything related to authenticity. This is simply a technical problem, not one of registration use. Easily solved.

I also should caveat that there are more options than Facebook and Google; OpenID is still out there, as well as others. Most lacks the key tie-ins and authenticity, so for now Facebook is leading the way… again. But there’s room in the space for growth.

Would love to hear your thoughts on this… something I missed?

- Jason
Observer Interactive