This is something often discussed, but difficult to solve. What if 10 people bookmark this post, and their del.icio.us bookmarks permeate FriendFeed? Then, those conversations, all different conversations, out of context, get pulled back into your Disqus-powered comment set here? Would that make sense? Would that make you more powerful because you got more comments, or more informed because you saw what person A said on comment stream B in audience C? I think that while it's all right and good to say "give me my comments" as many have for many months, there are often conversations that belong elsewhere, and not to the originator... therefore, not an easy fix. - Louis Gray

louis - how did you post this reply to both FF and Disqus? i replied vie disqus which will appear here at FF shortly, but unfortunately not in this item - Fred Wilson

I think he copied and pasted it. - Mark Trapp

Copy and paste magic. I posted to your site first in a valiant attempt to not keep my comments siloed here. :-) - Louis Gray

In the spirit of having comments appear everywhere someone sneezes about a piece of content, my thoughts are here: http://friendfeed.com/e... - Mark Trapp

I suppose someone could figure out a scheme for linking from your blog to related conversations on FriendFeed... you're giving up the illusion of control that is imparted by hosting comments on your blog in the first place, but at least you'd be following the conversation (until a different aggregator becomes more popular). - Steve Lynch via Alert Thingy

Steve, I like that. Maybe a pingback/trackback for Friendfeed comments to the original blog? - Mark Trapp

I used to think similarly to Fred that comments/discussion about a blog "belonged" on the the blog. But as I start to use FriendFeed, I'm changing my mind. Why are discussions on FriendFeed any different than discussions over email or at lunch or on twitter? None of those comments live on the blog. Maybe you don't care for the blogger's audience. It's definitely not those people's "fault" in any way for choosing to comment wherever they want. - Deva Hazarika

Fred, maybe it makes sense for Jackson to join FF? Problem solved. - Thomas Hawk

I still want to turn my comments on my blogger blog over to FF though. - Thomas Hawk

Fred - this comment from your post: "His reward is the comments it generates." Well, yes and no. As a blogger, I definitely get the reward aspect of comments. You've managed to come up with something that engages others. I love that. But I'd argue there's another reward from blogging: awareness. Site views, comments, Likes, Diggs, Stumbles are all tangible signs of awareness. If your blog post increases awareness of (i) the subject matter; (ii) your own blog/way of thinking, I'd argue that's the bigger reward. In that context, comments happening all over are a good thing. It's not a single instance of comments on the blog - it's awareness all over the Web. Built up over time. And that's why comments separated from my blog don't bother me. - Hutch Carpenter

@thomas hawk - not going to happen. jackson hates technology particularly anything that i like or do. he probably thinks twitter and friendfeed are right wing plots to destroy our society. - Fred Wilson

Yes, this happens all the time. I often have to leave the Friendfeed link back on Twitter or in comments on the blog post to make sure they're not left out of the conversation. - Dion Hinchcliffe via twhirl

@fred, what if you trapped him and got one of those machines like they had in Clockwork Orange to keep his eyelids open while you made him watch FriendFeed for 48 hours. might work ;) - Thomas Hawk

Seriously though. Conversations are like water. They go wherever they feel like. This is nothing new. Just check your server logs and you'll see that conversations are happening around your blog content all the time in places all over the web. Metafilter, digg, reddit, FF, twitter, personal emails, other blogs, flickr forums, TiVo forums, Yahoo stock boards, etc. No way to manage it all in my opinion. - Thomas Hawk

Most of my thoughts on this topic have already been covered by the other commenters here. One bit I will add is that I've been in contact with the Disqus team, and I hope to add the option to copy comments though to Disqus in the not too distant future. - Paul Buchheit

Also, many of my FF comments aren't relevant in the original context. For example, one of my most recent FF comments is "Sanjeev, you should watch this video." In many cases, FF is enabling new types of comments that would not (or should not) have occurred in the past. - Paul Buchheit

may be one solution is to allow the commenter to mark the comment as public or private and create "conversation track back widgets" which blog owners can embed in their blogs to bet a summary and a link back to the friendfeed conversations. - Edwin Khodabakchian

comments want to be free - ☠ Tyler Gillies ☠

@Paul re: Disqus. Nice. - Hutch Carpenter

agree with Tyler. Comments want to be free. - Thomas Hawk

I frequently use the strategy that @Dion uses - in the comments section of my blog, I post a link back to the conversations that are happening elsewhere. FriendFeed happens to be a lot easier to link to than Twitter conversations (which I like). Also a lot of conversation happens on Hacker News. But as a blogger, I really really like those conversations - because they DON'T happen as often on my blog as they do on these other services. Might be humbling, but it's true. And I'll take the conversations wherever they come from. - Melissa Chang

Someone asked me this on friendfeed earlier today -- "how did you get friendfeed stats on your blog". And the simple answer - I installed the "friendfeed comments" wordpress plugin. Since friendfeed released an API, it is pretty simple for blogs to pull back comments (if the user has their blog on friendfeed; this wouldn't work for an entry that was posted to friendfeed through delicious or some other service. Integrating all that is certainly non-trivial). - Robert Felty

@Melissa @Dion - that's something I've been doing as well. I post a FriendFeed link at the end of my blog posts. The link is to an "everyone" search on the blog post's title. Let the reader decide where to engage. - Hutch Carpenter

Well said ^_^ - JC John Sese Cuneta

i wrote about this yesterday, whether the comments create community or noise, and that i can understand people wanting comments to return to their original source, like on a blog, for example. i'd like to find some compromise. disqus would be nice. but i agree with thomas hawk and many others. comments are just going to happen everywhere. http://lifestream.fm/blog... - Jodi Church

@Paul Bucheit - i am so happy to hear that you are working with the disqus team to push comments back to the blog. that's basically what i want. i've asked Paul Graham to do the same thing on Hacker News. FF and Hacker News have the best "off blog" conversations around my blog posts and I'd love to get them back on my blog. thanks!! - Fred Wilson

I was mentioning this to someone via email a few days ago - it shouldn't be too hard for someone to write a discovery engine (not unlike techmeme) but make it a plugin for blogs. the engine would automatically detect your link on sites like twitter, ff, digg, reddit, stumbleupon, etc., etc. and automatically pull the discussion back to the corresponding blog post. I'm thinking disqus would be a prime candidate to integrate this since they already have the beginnings in their current system. - Paul Short

Totally agree. - David Álvarez

@Robert Felty WHERE do we find the "friendfeed comments" wordpress plugin? - Thomas Ho