So, if my FriendFeed on this is embedded on my blog, will it be considered a comment? Blog posts are daily journals that are dead, until comments bring them back alive and keep them living! - Michael Sheehan from twhirl

sorry Robert but you're wrong - Steven Hodson

"Trying to control where comments on your blog posts are displayed is fruitless" would be be my version of your post - Brian Sullivan

Heheh. Already more comments here too. - Robert Scoble

Isn't the web meant to be "hyperlinked" at first? - directeur from NoiseRiver

Dead? No. Being re-invented as we speak? Yes. - Mike Doeff

So Robert...where are you more likely to respond to a comment? Here on FF or over on your blog? - Jerry Chacon

If FriendFeed would just partner with Disqus to handle comments, we'd have a comment system that cut across all the channels, no? - Ken Sheppardson

I'm against "centred" things. Look at twitter. The most distributed things are, the best it is. - directeur from NoiseRiver

Jerry: I'm equally likely to respond to a comment here as well as on my blog. Ken, Disqus can help, but not really. I still like commenting on FriendFeed better than on people's blogs. For a whole lot of reasons. Much of which has to do with UI and iPhone accessibility. - Robert Scoble

It's because people want to OWN their own comments. You can store your own comments wherever you like because they belong to you. I wonder how many people started blogging because they wanted to join the conversation on their own blog rather than just replying on other people's blog? - Chris Paton

@Robert - I commented here strictly based on your headline as I am in the middle of a post and your post hasn't shown up in my reader yet (yes I could have clicked the link but I'm busy - post reading can wait) - I very often comment on the blogs if the post is *sufficently interesting* enough to entice me to post a comment. - Steven Hodson

directeur: cool. My experience shows that most people don't care about those issues. Including on Twitter. When it's up I still see a Tweet every second coming into my account. - Robert Scoble

Robert, I'm clearly quite visible here, but even for me, I still get more comments on the blog than on FriendFeed, in most cases. See my article about that here: http://www.louisgray.com/live... - Louis Gray

Heh...I commented on your blog Robert, but I'm seeing a "waiting moderation" message. Score 1 for FriendFeed (you're seeing this comment immediately). - Hutch Carpenter

I second that comments are being reinvented. I also agree with people wanting to own their comments. I've just become so used to Disqus and FriendFeed that I couldn't believe that some blogs still had the old Wordpress commenting mechanism. - Rishabh Mishra (p248)

Louis: I still am getting a lot of comments, but I'm definitely seeing the tide switching. I bet that much of your audience doesn't know you are on FriendFeed all the time yet. - Robert Scoble

I'm thinking that the "latest" section on my homepage should just be my brand's Ffeed - Tom Beardshaw

Cool. And the comments are all here on FriendFeed.. Very cool. Of course, for Joe.Blogspot the thesis is incorrect. But maybe it's a trend. - john conroy

FF allows us to cross-post back to twitter when responding to tweets in our FF feed here. Wouldn't it be possible to send our FF comments to Disqus comments back to the blogs? - sedgewick

If it's a blogger I know is on FF, I'll comment on FF. - Tom Landini

I think he's right...if not dead, they are close - George Gray

We've had several very useful discussions on scripting.com recently. - Dave Winer

the-iBlog doesn't get many comments, and I'm not commenting on other blogs as much either. - Oli from the-iBlog

gee i never got many blog comments in the first place - Andy Sternberg from twhirl

A bit premature but inevitably I think you will pan out to be right. It seems like more of a chore checking my own blog's comments lately, and I seldom leave blog comments for lack of patience with login/typekey/captcha lameness. The ease and speed of commenting here has made blog comments seem downright stale. - Steve Isaacs

Not totally dead but getting there! You should add FF comments to your blog, I just did and love the integration: http://www.seanpercival.com/blog... - sean percival

Your post does have some merit, Robert. Before FriendFeed (and still currently), people's actual visits to blogs were diminishing, while reading through rss readers and such was increasing. This is especially true for tech blogs. I think people were longing to be able to comment via their feed reader without having to go back to the blog. FriendFeed seems to solve this, and I think will only get better as they improve. - Jesse Stay

I don't want blog comments to die... I love receiving them! - Paul Stamatiou

I want to also add that there's nothing wrong with people not coming back to your blog if you have a way for them to still build community around your blog, outside of the blog itself. If you can still monetize that audience or turn that audience into some value as a blog owner, traffic on blogs themselves will decrease even more in the future, while community around those blogs will only increase. - Jesse Stay

Mine have always been pretty dead... - Fraser Smith

FF/Disqus are disruptive technologies but if they prevented blog owners from getting at comments on their writings and integrating them back into the page, you'd better bet that bloggers would work around that. - Andy Murdoch

I've noticed most blogs don't get many comments, and the ones that do tend to get comments of a spammy sort (people pimping their own blogs in Techcrunch comments, for example). For the most part, real discussion still takes place on forums, or various incarnations of the such (which I'd classify Friendfeed and even Twitter as). People that like to have conversations tend to gravitate towards places where they can decide what to talk about - people's blogs don't really offer that. - Eric P

Depends on the blog, however, on the majority of blogs comments are dead. - Dave Martin

Bernstein was right. http://www.markbernstein.org/Apr0401... - Boris Gordon from twhirl

Here is the comment that I left on your blog: "Robert, you are a master at baiting, I’ll give you that. :) On a separate note, clearly people weren’t wrapping their heads around the car post. Perhaps it’s because automobiles are outside of your perceived areas of expertise?" - Mark Dykeman

It's more than just comments that are changing. Comments aren't dead but they are 'moving' . Clearly a sign of both Friendfeed's appeal. It's happening faster than this guy expected. Most users will still go directly to the blogs and websites they like for a long time. I had several blogs with the comments turned off and they still were relatively easy to SEO. The dialog is clearly better here. Go Disqus and FF! - Charlie Anzman

Claiming that "XYZ is dead is dead". I think FF comments and the like are interesting, but unless it's easier to create the intersection for the average user, this is going to be an inside joke. Maybe that's why people like it. - tim

Now... can I replace my commenting system on my WP blog with Friend Feed? I mean, I'd be sad to see ID go away, but it seems there's more activity here. Edit: Found this: http://wordpress.org/extend... - Adam C.

Comments are definitely in a state of change, not dead though. Maybe once Friendfeed gets more mainstream we'll see more blogs using the FF plug-in, along with Disqus and Seesmic to enable more conversations between platforms. David Risley has an interesting perspective on this: http://www.davidrisley.com/2008... - Larry Kless

Wait till the spammers start targetting FriendFeed - Peter Reavy

I for one accept our new commenting overlords. - David Cohn

Over the last year, we've seen an increase in the number of comments on our Boulton & Co. blog, but not an increase in their quality. I see, however, that the Huffington Post has a loyal band of "commenters". I think you're more advanced in this area in the States than we are in the UK. - Miranda Richardson

not sure if i fully agree with you (even your 2/3 dead posted elsewhere), but this is exactly why i love reading your blog and why i'll follow your conversations wherever you have them. and so my thought: comments aren't dead, they are just simultaneously getting more dispersed (friendfeed+twitter) and easier to follow (disqus). however, commenting is still the domain of the few. i think new and very different forms of interaction around content will come soon (i'm working on one myself). - mike

Really ;-) - sachin sawant