Another merger in tech, this one isn’t quite as sexy as Yahoo! and Tumblr, or even Microsoft and Nokia, but if you have any interest in promoting content you know that this looks like an important deal.
I think about switching my blog commenting system from Disqus to LiveFyre every time I visit HootSuite. Yeah, just because they use it. But it’s kind of low on the priority list of projects. And there really isn’t a great reason to switch commenting platforms, because they are so similar, unless terms of service change or some other shakeup like a killer app.
Social commenting is getting to be a pretty crowded space between Disqus, Facebook Comments, Google+ Comments, IntenseDebate, and Storify, and probably a couple others that are out lurking. There is an obvious appeal for content promotion by having readers share their opinions on your site and simultaneously posting to their social networks. It’s like duh.
Storify is a little different. It can be used as a commenting system, it can also be used as a blogging platform that can pull in other forms of social media and embed them into webpages.
If nothing else, these were the two companies that were winning the design battle, user experience, and neato factor. You can see the announcements from both Livefyre and Storify to see the difference between the two systems and how they compliment each other.
In other words comments aren’t about comments, it’s also about driving traffic and that’s what engagement is about.
UPDATE: Embedded the entire Storify post
See? Neato.
UPDATE: Storify is no more…..
