We did so for a lot of reasons, including being able to offer a social layer to our comments that has been dormant until now.

Through this new commenting system, readers can:

• more readily share comments to Facebook and Twitter (or choose not to)
• follow conversations across multiple platforms
• tag friends and draw them into the stream
• accurately flag other comments as spam or offensive

As part of the change, users will have the option to sign in to comment using their Twitter, Facebook, Google or LinkedIn credentials, or you can create a user ID specific to AllThingsD.

And don’t worry, the comments left on the site since it launched are being imported into this new system and should still be entirely accessible. If you don’t see posts you’ve made or comments in a thread you’ve been following, give it a little time and they will appear. In other words, no pixels were harmed in the making of this move — except the troll ones.

On the back end, Livefyre will be working to reduce spam before you have to see it, as well as making it easier and faster for us to moderate the comments that you want to see (and excise the ones all of us don’t).

Although we have done everything in our power to minimize any hiccups in the process of installing Livefyre, all changes come with bumps in the road. Ideally, you will not really notice the new interface and only see a new ease in commenting.

Still, we fully expect you to have an opinion about the switch, so, as always, feel free to comment. Just keep in mind that, new commenting software or not, we still actively monitor our comment threads.

In short:

• Play nice. Rude, derogatory, defamatory stuff? Not here.
• While we welcome criticism as well as praise, we don’t tolerate baseless attacks.
• If your comments create a hostile environment, they’re outta there.

We have a delete button and we’re not afraid to use it.

Corporate Intelligence reviewed preliminary galleys of Schmidt’s new book, “The New Digital Age,” (Random House) which debuts in April. And Schmidt’s views on China stand out the strongest amid often predictable techno-utopian views of the future.

Some of these views are both cliched and camera-ready . He imagines that soon an “illiterate Maasai cattle herder in the Serengeti” will use a smartphone to “inquire the day’s market prices and crowd-source the whereabouts of any nearby predators.

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“Glenn Britt is currently under contract with Time Warner Cable. If and when that changes we will announce it,” a spokesman for the company said, in response to a question.

A leading candidate to succeed Mr. Britt is Rob Marcus, the cable operator’s chief operating officer, said people familiar with the matter.

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Several analysts also cut their ratings on the company, sending the company’s shares as low as 18% before finishing the day at $17.48.

Late Wednesday, Fusion said it expects third-quarter sales of $80 million. Analysts surveyed by FactSet had forecast the company to report revenue of $137.1 million. For its entire fiscal year, Fusion now estimates is sales will be $420 million to $440 million, down from an earlier forecast of $521 million to $539 million.

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The infiltration at the Journal, along with reports of computer network breaches at the New York Times and other news outlets, indicate that Chinese spying on U.S. media has become a widespread phenomenon.

Chinese hackers have for years targeted major U.S. media companies with persistent hacking, repeatedly penetrating deep inside some newsgathering systems, according to several people familiar with the response to the cyberattacks.

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That’s a pricing maneuver so bold it may make even Cosmo readers blush. In the book and newspaper industries, digital versions are typically cheaper than print ones. But some in the magazine world are going the other way, charging more for their digital versions.

Buffeted by declining advertising, which accounted for about 75% of their revenue historically, magazines are turning to tablet computers and digital editions to boost circulation revenue. In doing so, they are hoping to reset decades of subscription discounting so deep that a year’s supply of magazines like Esquire currently costs just $8.

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The deal could give al-Jazeera its first access to national cable distribution in the U.S., a goal it has campaigned hard for over the last several years.

Current doesn’t have the full distribution to 90 million homes that most cable channels have. However, it does reach about 60 million homes. Right now, al-Jazeera’s English channel is distributed in local cable markets including Washington, D.C. and Burlington, Vermont, as well as online.

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Google over the past year has boosted the Google+ operation by integrating it with the company’s top-tier properties, including its Web search engine, Gmail, YouTube, business listings and the Android mobile-operating system.

People using Google to search for photos or customer reviews of a restaurant, for example, automatically are steered to the restaurant’s Google+ page. In the fall, Google began requiring people who want to post their reviews of restaurants or other businesses to use their Google+ profiles to do so. The same rule applies for reviews of physical goods or mobile apps obtained through Google.

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The 65-year-old music industry veteran is taking with him some of his talent-management business, through which he handles the affairs of the Eagles, Christina Aguilera and other acts, according to people familiar with the matter.

Mr. Azoff’s employment contract hadn’t been due to expire until mid-2014. Chief Executive Michael Rapino’s contract, also due to expire in 2014, was recently renewed for a new five-year term, Live Nation said last week, without mentioning Mr. Azoff.

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The settlement disclosed Thursday allows U.S. publishers to remove digitized titles from the Google Library Project if they want. The settlement also “acknowledges the rights and interests of copyright-holders.” Court approval isn’t necessary.

The Authors Guild is still pursuing the legal case.

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The funding values the San Francisco company at more than $177 million, up from $8 million a year ago, a person familiar with the matter said.

Investors include venture-capital firms Baseline Ventures and DCM and Chinese social-networking concern Renren Inc.

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One of the joys of running a Web site is the constant interaction with readers from around the globe. At any time of the day or night, you, our readership, can read what we write and respond with censure, praise and ideas that take our work in new directions. We value the commenters who post on this site.

Really. We do.

However, one of the truly painful aspects of running a Web site is the constant interaction with readers from around the globe. At any time of the day or night, you, our readership, can read what we write and respond with unfiltered hate, pointless name-calling and blatant accusations. There are times when it becomes difficult to value the commenters who post on this site.

Just for example, in the comments following the death of Steve Jobs, there were many heartfelt expressions of sadness and loss. There were also more than a few comments — quickly deleted by AllThingsD — that used the opportunity to spew vitriol of a particularly venomous nature. We won’t tolerate that sort of thing. At all.

While we’re here, let’s talk about the other types of comments we will delete without remorse:

• Self-advertising: If you include a URL of any kind, the comment will probably not make it through our spam filter. All comments are reviewed by hand, so some comments with URLs will make it back into the comment thread — if they are deemed relevant. However, if you include a link to your own blog in an effort to advertise on this site, those comments will be deleted. If your URL is part of your sig file, you might want to consider taking it out.
• Accusations of biased reporting: It is fruitless to remind you that this is a news Web site and that we adhere to high standards of journalistic conduct. All you have to do is read the ethics statements of every writer. If, for example, you choose to suggest — even obliquely — that one of our writers is receiving money from a company in return for coverage, or is selling a stock short in order to take advantage of insider knowledge, your comment will be deleted. Since we don’t edit comments, if you write a long thoughtful letter about your reaction to one of our stories and then throw in an unsupported accusation at the end, the whole comment will be deleted. And that’s a shame.
• Accusations aimed at the companies we cover: It is more than acceptable to disagree in the comments with the choices made by companies or individuals, but to make the leap to saying so-and-so is a “douchebag” (a favorite term, apparently, among commenters), or to speculate about that person’s sexual preferences as regards certain farm animals — that’s personal, unnecessary and delete-worthy.
• Personal comments about the writers on this site: Do we really need to get into this? Really? Okay, in a nutshell, don’t call names. Your second-grade teacher had it right. Your comment will stand in a corner for all eternity if you decide it is necessary to pick on the person behind the pixels.

“But your comment section is so mild compared to others on the Web!” We get that a lot. And we like it that way. There are many, many other places you can get your hate on. This just isn’t one of those places.

AllThingsD appreciates the willingness of our readers to engage with us in the pursuit of tech news and interesting stories. Please believe us when we say we will work tirelessly to keep our comments hate-free and on-topic. If you have a contrarian view, great, share it. If you have criticism of the site or of its subjects, go for it, post away. Just keep it polite. And, if you can’t keep your bile inside where it belongs, post somewhere else.

If you want to know more, please re-read our crystal-clear Comments Policy here.

The social networking giant has just added five more lead investment banks to its IPO from the original six, according to an updated filing. On top of that, Facebook added another 20 investment banks that will get a piece of the action.

The new members to the lead group are Citigroup, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank Securities, RBC Capital Markets, Wells Fargo Securities.

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Barring a last-minute hitch, EMI’s recorded-music unit will be sold to Vivendi SA’s Universal Music Group for $1.9 billion, while a group spearheaded by Sony Corp.’s music division will buy the publishing operation for $2.2 billion, according to a person familiar with the matter. The deal, valued at $4.1 billion in total, could be announced later Friday, but the bank may wait until the weekend, the person said.

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Humor online is a tricky thing, as any misunderstood internet commenter can tell you. Part of what makes comedy work are subtle cues and indicators of “play,” that we’re in on this humor thing together. When the medium for that exchange is something as minimal as Twitter (you’ve got 140 characters, and that’s all), strip those subtle cues out and — well, stuff like this happens.

Boing Boing partner Xeni Jardin, discussing an “oddly presented” and largely misunderstood tweet from @theonion yesterday morning reporting that screams and gunfire had been heard inside the Capitol building

Certainly in the context of Twitter there are memorable tweets that reflect the drama of a particular moment, but the dilemma for Twitter, which is to some extent the challenge for all of us in this information revolution, is how do you discern meaning from this overwhelming array of information that we are now exposed to?

Former State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley, an avid Twitter user, on the long-term value of tweets

Is this really a fight over hyper-technicalities over particular language aspects of this private-party contractual documentation, or is this really a fight over whether the blogosphere should be able to take people’s creative works and reproduce it?

Righthaven CEO Steve Gibson, who says he remains optimistic about his company’s future despite its legal setbacks