Okay – you’ve been yelling about this for over a year, and I’m finally listening.
I’ve been watching my comment counts go down over the past few months. This is odd because my pageviews are staying the same (and actually increasing every month). I had to conclude recently that my posts have been sucking nards. This is possible. I’m coming off nearly one full year of posting, and I felt some crappy posts have gone live in the past two months. Not a lot, but a few.
But then recently I’ve written some really strong ones and received hardly any comments. So either I’m living in a fantasy world of my writing being amazing or there’s something else going on.
The commenting system.
First of all, I love LiveFyre. I love the people at LiveFyre. I know several of them. They rock to an insane degree. The product is awesome and I couldn’t more highly endorse it. I can’t tell you how often their support team has been available to me whenever I’ve had a problem, and I’ve had a lot of them. Total number of dollars I’ve spent with LiveFyre? $0.
But I think it’s time to turn it off.
Now, I’m not going with a competitor like Disqus or CommentLuv. As far as I’m concerned LifeFyre is still the top of the heap for third party commenting systems. I, however, just can’t ignore anymore the throngs of people that continually tell me they struggle with the system. I did a poll today on Twitter and Facebook and 85% of the people said they would comment more if they didn’t have to log-in.
Ironically, LiveFyre has a “no log-in” feature, but it’s hard to figure out.
Personally I don’t really get this. I can’t imagine it’s a hassle for anyone (or at least it’s not a hassle for me) to comment with LiveFyre, but it clearly is for some of you. In the past I was just like, “F it. If they can’t figure out how to log in, screw ’em!” Not that I was mad, I just didn’t think it was a big deal.
Well, the masses have spoken. And maybe it is a big deal from certain devices. I never comment on my own stuff, so I don’t know how it works. I just know how I do it from the back-end. I’m always logged in so there’s nothing to do other than type.
Bottom line – this is YOUR section. The comments are all about you and not me. I need to respect the will of the people. I’m going to be turning off LiveFyre very shortly.
Now, I’m all for turning it back on in the future. I mean, on any big website (HuffPo, CNN, Engadget) you always have to log-in before you comment. Engadget actually uses LiveFyre. But for small blogs like mine, maybe it’s not necessary.
Some of you will not like this. I get it. I don’t love it either, and I already feel like a total dick turning off LiveFyre. They’ll get over it. But I still am a little sick to my stomach. I know I sound lame, but I am loyal.
But ultimately, I’m most loyal to you. So, it’s going away. But here’s the deal.
You sons of bitches better start commenting the shit out of my posts. Or else I’m turning it back on AND WITH CAPTCHA. Oh yeah. I’ll do it. I’m crazy like that.
