Facebook Introduces New Comments Box Plugin

Facebook has upgraded the comments plugin for third-party websites to have the same capabilities currently available on page walls within the social network. The plugin processes social signals to surface the most relevant comments, and a new moderation dashboard allows admins to block profanity and other objectionable content. Users can login to the plugin with credentials from third-parties including Yahoo!, and comments are published to a user’s wall by default, driving traffic to the website.

Facebook originally planned to use Twitter and Google logins for the commenting system as well. But both were scrapped in the final hours leading up to launch for unspecified reasons, according to people familiar with the matter. Actually, to those who have watched the space over the past several months, it’s pretty clear why the options vanished: all the players involved just plain don’t like each other.

This seems like the kind of thing that news sites might appreciate most, so it seems fitting that Examiner.com announced its own implementation of the comments box in a press release that went out around the same time as Facebook’s developer blog post did.With these enhancements, Facebook’s Comments Box plugin is ready to compete with WordPress comments, Disqus, IntenseDebate, and other embeddable comment systems. By powering their comment reels with authenticated identity of Facebook profiles instead of allowing anonymous comments, websites can increase the quality discussion, repel trolls, and not require Facebook users to register for a proprietary commenting account.

From a user perspective, this is all too bad. Having the option to login with all of these under one system would be great. Of course, from the perspective of startups like Disqus, this social graph war is undoubtedly welcome since they’re a neutral third-party that is free to utilize all the services.