They never had engaged audiences. - Robert Scoble

@Robert Scoble exactly! :) - Lora Lufark

Robert's right, but I also believe that they are too slow to Market. We have so much content today at are fingertips and people need to remember that as consumers we have more choices than ever and most are finding social networking sites more informative at the end of the day. - Clifford Kennedy

Hi Darren: In your blog post, you suggest that mainstream media blogs attract fewer comments than mainstream media web stories. I suspect this is largely due to blogs getting less prominence than news stories on mainstream media sites. It could also be that blog comments are not being reviewed as frequently by moderators (the moderator could be the blogger of course) and thus generating less real-time conversation than the comments on news stories which may be getting more frequent moderation. Systems vary from site to site, so this is just a generalization. - Neil Sanderson

I think many of the media sites have their own, proprietary comment system as well. They lack a social aspect to them that's inherent in many of the sites with better commenting systems. Simple things like being able to follow people, see what comments others have posted, go back and review your own comments, "like" other people's comments, etc. all create a social atmosphere. I think if a lot of these sites adopted a more "open" commenting system like disqus they'd be better off and more engaging. - Bryan Zirkel