Gawker Will Deputize Commenters, Says Sheriff Nick Denton
Gawker plans to launch an ambitious new commenting model within the next couple months, said its founder, Nick Denton, at SXSW today. The company aims to recruit commenters to elevate the level of discussion on its blogs by segmenting them and giving them moderation tools.
So the first person to leave a comment on a Gawker network post will now be in charge of policing the thread of commenters who reply, maintaining a high level of discussion and recruiting other voices to participate and bring more page views. And there will be multiple comment moderators and threads per post. Free labor!
In a conversation with longtime blogger Anil Dash, Denton said he’s tried throughout his entrepreneurial career at Moreover and Gawker to cultivate good conversations online, at scale. Lots of things haven’t worked.
For instance, the gamification of comments — basically, giving people badges for repeat participation — were a wrong turn, because they encourage insular communities and aren’t a motivator for the most interesting people.
And while Facebook’s embedded comment system might help control for blog-comment trolls on sites like TechCrunch, Denton said, it makes conversations more boring by discouraging new and anonymous commenters. Those people often share the juiciest information.
“The most interesting comments, they don’t come from people with Klout scores. They don’t come from people with a history on our sites,” Denton said.
The ultimate goal of the new system, Denton said, would be to attract people like American Apparel’s Dov Charney or NBC’s Brian Williams — who are at the center of news on Gawker sites — to chime in themselves.
RELATED POSTS:
- The Homeless Defend Becoming Hotspots
- Pinterest CEO Ben Silbermann’s Lesson for Start-Ups: Go Your Own Way
- The Best and Weirdest Requests and Errands at SXSW From Zaarly, TaskRabbit and Others
- Al Gore and Sean Parker Blame TV and Money for Ruining Politics, and Say Social Media Ought to Fix It
- Letters From SXSW: How to Be “Disruptive”
- SXSW News: Jerry Levin’s StartUp Health Academy for Entrepreneurs Announces First Class
- The Best (And Worst) Marketing Gimmick in Austin
- Forget Cleantech — It’s Cleanweb at SXSW
- Houston Comes to Austin as Kara Swisher Talks Lessons Learned with Dropbox CEO
- After Nearly Doubling Its Userbase in Three Months, Instagram Will Finally Come to Android
- The Power of Power at South By Southwest
- How Jimmy Fallon Uses the Nike FuelBand (It’s Naughty, Of Course)
- Gawker Will Deputize Commenters, Says Sheriff Nick Denton
- Microsoft’s Danah Boyd: Social Media Makes the World More Fearful
- Etsy CEO on Building a Lean Start-Up: Deploy, Deploy, Deploy
- South By Southwest Parties On, Despite the Rain
- At SXSW, Joi Ito Invites Tech Entrepreneurs Into the MIT Media Lab
- Texas Gov. Rick Perry Drops In on South By Southwest
- Can Playing More Games Make Your Life “SuperBetter”? Jane McGonigal Thinks So.
- Google’s Vic Gundotra on Why Plus Isn’t a Minus
- Rain Douses Austin as Crowds Flood Into SXSW
- Checking In and Checking Out South by Southwest
- SXSW Serendipity Gets Yet Another Helper: Kismet
- The Essential SXSW Tech Tool Kit
- Geek in the Heart of Texas: AllThingsD at SXSW 2012