You’ve seen it at the bottom of some blog posts. It’s a long stream of “So-and-so said this on so-and-so site” with every retweet on the subject clogging up the flow of discussion.
It’s conversation vomit. It’s when an aggregator eats everything around the Internet about a blog post, comes back to the blog post, and pukes it all over the real, actual conversation happening there.
When it comes to comments on the Internet, context is everything. Hacker News will give you a certain type of comment. Digg will net you other types. Twitter will get you a bunch of retweets that are, for the most part, duplicates of one message. And of course Youtube comments will slowly chip away at your faith in humanity. Don’t subject your blog readers to that.
Leave these comments where they belong: in their communities, the places that provide context.
Disqus is a great example of a product that separates the comments after aggregation. If you really need to include your Twitter mentions, it’s a must-have. For an example, see how Chris Brogan uses it effectively on his blog.
