Readers of The Huffington Post like to share their opinions: That much is obvious from the comment counts on its stories, which can frequently number more than 10,000.
HuffPo recently celebrated a testament to the large, engaged audience it has attracted: its 100 millionth comment last weekend.
The online newspaper now averages more than 175,000 comments per day, and the site received more than 4.45 million comments last month alone, says founder Arianna Huffington.
In a phone interview with Mashable, Huffington attributed HuffPo‘s success to several factors, the chief being pre-moderation of comments.
“From the first day when we had hardly any resources to spend on it, we committed ourselves to moderating comments,” Huffington says.
HuffPo employs 30 human moderators who work alongside “Julia,” a backend moderator that algorithmically filters out comments that don’t belong on the site. They keep trolls and offensive remarks out of the comment sections and work to quickly approve posts so that there isn’t a long gap between submitting a comment and it appearing on the site.
Although moderation goes a long way toward ensuring the quality of the comments, HuffPo also does an excellent job of surfacing the remarks that are most relevant to individual readers. If you connect to Huffingtonpost.com using your Facebook or Twitter login, you’ll see comments posted by people in your network above regular comments. This allows for high-frequency group debate amid the broader public conversation.
The rest of the comments are displayed not chronologically, but ordered by popularity and a user’s commenting history.
Recognition is another important factor, says Huffington. Readers can earn badges and privileges (such as the ability to author posts using rich text) for sharing and commenting on content. Soon, Huffington Post CTO Paul Berry says, users will be able to award each other badges to recognize commenters who are funny (“LOL” badge) and insightful (“pundit” badge). Leaderboards will also show commenters that are worth following.
There is also, of course, a certain je ne sais quoi to HuffPo‘s commenting success — something about the tone, Huffington suggests, that makes readers want to comment.
“We have a certain attitude, a certain playfulness in the way we do headlines for instance, that makes people want to be more engaged,” Huffington says. Questions and other types of prompts at the end of posts also help get the conversation going.
“People no longer want to passively sit back and be served up news, information and entertainment. They want to engage with a story, react to it, add to it and share it,” she explains.
The Huffington Post, it appears, has given people a platform to do exactly that.
More About: aol, Arianna Huffington, community, Huffington Post, journalism, mediaFor more Media coverage:Follow Mashable Media on TwitterBecome a Fan on FacebookSubscribe to the Media channelDownload our free apps for Android, Mac, iPhone and iPad
Posted on Tue, 02 Aug 2011 15:59:38 +0000 at http://feeds.mashable.com/~r/Mashable/~3/aqjCsUW1iRg/
Comments: http://mashable.com/2011/08/02/arianna-huffington-100-million-comments/#comments
HuffPo recently celebrated a testament to the large, engaged audience it has attracted: its 100 millionth comment last weekend.
The online newspaper now averages more than 175,000 comments per day, and the site received more than 4.45 million comments last month alone, says founder Arianna Huffington.
In a phone interview with Mashable, Huffington attributed HuffPo‘s success to several factors, the chief being pre-moderation of comments.
“From the first day when we had hardly any resources to spend on it, we committed ourselves to moderating comments,” Huffington says.
HuffPo employs 30 human moderators who work alongside “Julia,” a backend moderator that algorithmically filters out comments that don’t belong on the site. They keep trolls and offensive remarks out of the comment sections and work to quickly approve posts so that there isn’t a long gap between submitting a comment and it appearing on the site.
Although moderation goes a long way toward ensuring the quality of the comments, HuffPo also does an excellent job of surfacing the remarks that are most relevant to individual readers. If you connect to Huffingtonpost.com using your Facebook or Twitter login, you’ll see comments posted by people in your network above regular comments. This allows for high-frequency group debate amid the broader public conversation.
The rest of the comments are displayed not chronologically, but ordered by popularity and a user’s commenting history.
Recognition is another important factor, says Huffington. Readers can earn badges and privileges (such as the ability to author posts using rich text) for sharing and commenting on content. Soon, Huffington Post CTO Paul Berry says, users will be able to award each other badges to recognize commenters who are funny (“LOL” badge) and insightful (“pundit” badge). Leaderboards will also show commenters that are worth following.
There is also, of course, a certain je ne sais quoi to HuffPo‘s commenting success — something about the tone, Huffington suggests, that makes readers want to comment.
“We have a certain attitude, a certain playfulness in the way we do headlines for instance, that makes people want to be more engaged,” Huffington says. Questions and other types of prompts at the end of posts also help get the conversation going.
“People no longer want to passively sit back and be served up news, information and entertainment. They want to engage with a story, react to it, add to it and share it,” she explains.
The Huffington Post, it appears, has given people a platform to do exactly that.
More About: aol, Arianna Huffington, community, Huffington Post, journalism, mediaFor more Media coverage:Follow Mashable Media on TwitterBecome a Fan on FacebookSubscribe to the Media channelDownload our free apps for Android, Mac, iPhone and iPad
Posted on Tue, 02 Aug 2011 15:59:38 +0000 at http://feeds.mashable.com/~r/Mashable/~3/aqjCsUW1iRg/
Comments: http://mashable.com/2011/08/02/arianna-huffington-100-million-comments/#comments