Digital Biographer™

In my post of Top Tweets of 2008, I suggested that as Twitter grows and becomes more widely used and recognised, comments and conversation threads from Twitter will be placed into more and more web sites.

Expanding on that thought, I think there are a number of reasons for this: —

1. More people are using Twitter.
2. People hate logging in to multiple services just to state their opinion.
3. People love to see their own face or mark their territory.
4. Conversation online is becoming more visible, portable and shareable.
5. Using Twitter to make a comment is very fast, by its nature brief (140 characters) and immediate.
6. Twitter users tend to stay logged in to the service continually

I found that there was already a fair amount of discussion and interest appearing online related to the specific issue of Twitter integration into blogs.

WordPress plugins for Tweetbacks and Twitter Avatars

I’ve found a couple of plugins for the popular WordPress blogging platform which this blog uses use, that begin to address these issues: —

1. 
   Twittar – which places Twitter Avatars (also known as mug-shots) in WordPress comments.

   Cleverly, this plugin also checks (via your email address) to see if the person adding a comment has a ‘Gravatar‘ – and if so, uses this, but otherwise, will use the person’s Twitter avatar. If neither exist, no image is used.

2. 
   Tweetbacks (Beta) – which lists tweets about a specific blog.

   This is still a beta release, and was created very rapidly in response to a blog by Rachel Cuncliffe on Mashable which suggested 10 ways in which blog design would evolve in 2009 to incorporate Twitter. It searches twitter to show tweets which link to a particlar blog. An issue here is that Twitter comments often just report a blog’s existence, but they can also of course be used to give opinion – so it may be more useful as a tool that the blog author sees, but does not necessarily have to share and to hog a blog’s screen real-estate.

So… what if Disqus integrates Twitter?

Now, I’ve been using Disqus to manage comments on this blog for some months. Disqus replaces the default WordPress comments facility, which is what the plugins above are designed for. I chose Disqus as it allows a wider community than simply those who happen to be looking at this blog to be aware of comments about the blog, plus use of avatars, and the ability to find out more about those who comment, and see other comments from those contributors.

As you can see from the this blog’s sidebar, Disqus ‘socialises‘ commenting – which is one of the big strengths of Twitter, of course. Like Twitter, Disqus recognises that a simple image and a name are valuable currency online, particularly in social media, and making them easier to identify helps build communities.

Disqus already allows the integration of Facebook Connect, so that comments can be made by authenticating your ID from your Facebook account, and has the ability to link to Friendfeed, which aggregates your content from different social media. I think it’d make sense for Disqus to incorporate Twitter into its structure, so that tweetbacks, favourites, comments, and retweets can grow readily, but still maintain the important context of being linked to a particular discussion – and, at the same time, be reproduced, shared, enjoyed and added to elsewhere.

When the conversation becomes portable, it is easier for everyone to be heard.

What’s your view?

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