Facebook Comments Box, Ownership

I’ve been looking into the Facebook Comments Box, which launched in February.

Photo by suburbanslice

It’s a perfect example of what I’m seeing as a growing trend, in which various “social widgets” actually replace functionality which should be built into the platform hosting the site. Bundling together the ability to use your Facebook identity with the actual management of comments themselves looks like progress but I think it’s really a step backwards.
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WPBook 1.1.1 Released

(Update 2/10/09 – posted a quick bug fix 1.1.1 version just now – fixed two quick bugs in the facebook resizing code. Note that 1.1.1 may not show up in your autoupdate queue inside WordPress for 24 hours as WordPress doesn’t check every time you load the page)

Tagged and released version 1.1 of WPBook earlier today – get it from the wordpress plugin directory or this blog.

New in 1.1 (more info in the README with the plugin):

• Option to show “view post on www.blogurl.com” links associated with each post – shows the blog post in its original context
• Option to move the “share” link and “view original” link to the top or bottom of posts
• Option to show/hide the “add to profile” button

(Thanks to Brandon for all of the new settings).

Also I believe I’ve got the profile.setFBML working – meaning users no longer have to copy default FBML anywhere. At least it works in my two test blogs – let me know if it works for you.

I’ve also included better (I think) documentation, including screenshots of Facebook admin screens, to try to demonstrate the process of setting up an application.

If you’re using WPBook, please visit this page and add your blog in the comments.

Remaining open issues:

• Sociable.es Facebook Connect plugin conflicts. You’ll have to update the facebook client provided with the Connect plugin as described here
• Custom home pages – if your WordPress blog has a homepage that is not the default list of recent posts, I don’t know if this version will work for you – sorry, it is on my list to address but the theme currently assumes a default home page setup
• Javascript/CSS plugin conflicts – if your other plugins use css or javascript to set the height of the body or html elements to 100%, this will interfere with Facebook’s own iframe sizing javascript.

Enjoy!

Type Pad (dis)Connect – All UR comments are belong to US

In some ways it is exciting to see the launch of Type Pad Connect but in others it seems a Faustian bargain.

You get some spiffy features, including the ability of other bloggers to leave comments (which appear to be) on your site using OpenID, with threading, and with avatars; but in the process you put all your comments (and your relationship with your blog readers) in someone else’s hands.

It also seems like the real benefits of using TypePad Connect come from network effects – once everyone has a TypePad Profile and every blog uses it for comments, the benefits will be great. But what about when only some of your users have TypePad profiles, or want TypePad profiles? What about letting people comment with identities they already have rather than creating yet another profile / lifestream?

Ok, so maybe the title’s a bit strongly worded, and if you’re already using a hosted blog, or using TypePad for blogging, maybe it doesn’t where your comments actually live. But I don’t think it will work for me.

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Comment Fail

If you’ve tried to leave comments here recently, bless you, and I’m sorry.

First, the WP-OpenID plugin for one specific version (2.2.0) had a bug which ate comments containing double quotes, which means all comments with links in them. 2.2.1 fixes the problem.

Then, Luis Villa told me in email that the Captcha on my site was unusable. So I tried it, and he’s right.

A while back I installed a plugin for Mollom, which catches comments which are thought to be suspicious in one way or another, and then asks users to solve a captcha. Problem is that they were all unsolvable.

Or, rather, they were perfectly solvable, and I solved them – as I’m sure Luis had. But Mollom refuses to recognize my solutions. Maybe I really am a computer, and thus fail the Captcha.

Anyway, the point is, I’m not trying to make it difficult to comment on this blog, just trying to deal with spam. I’ve turned Mollom off again, and won’t re-enable it until I try it myself and see that it works.

On the Internet, People Know if you’re a dog

(Update, 2pm ET: Scott Hintz from TripIt replied in the comments on the original post apologizing for the employee’s behavior – thanks Scott.)

One of the famous cartoons of the first internet craze was this one from the New Yorker:

On the Internet Nobody Knows You're a Dog

The reality is, however, that increasingly people’s online identity can be mapped to their offline identity. (Check out Who Controls the Internet? for a well informed and very smart extended exploration on what this means from a legal perspective, and this reality checkfrom UNC).

Earlier this week, I wrote a blog post about TripIt and Dopplr, two major companies in the social travel market, which people use to share information about various trips they are taking or planning. It was a perfectly innocuous post, describing some of Dopplr’s new features which make it more like TripIt, and presumably more competitive with TripIt as a result.

That post recieved the following comment, from someone identifying himself as Thomas, with an email address at Yahoo! mail, and no url:

Well, in regards to Dopplr’s generic email import approach, I’ve tried forwarding several different emails I have from my company, travel agent, and from major airlines such as American Airlines, but they don’t work one bit. For example, Dopplr thinks I’m going to different places in Europe when I send in my opentable reservation.

In contrast, most of these work “out of the box” with TripIt. And when I complained about my travel agent not being supported, they added it within a day.

What’s more, is that I don’t really want to “discover” people I do not know on a trip. All I’ve been wanting to do is to manage my business travels better and inform my family. TripIt fits that bill perfectly.

So, I don’t really find Dopplr very useful. My two cents.

Thanks for the nice write-up though.

Best,
Thomas

Not itself a controversial comment, and I almost approved it without a second thought. But then I noticed that the IP address from which the comment was posted (69.12.150.246) is mapped to a machine called wall.tripitinc.com:

jeckman$ nslookup 69.12.150.246

Non-authoritative answer:
246.150.12.69.in-addr.arpa name = wall.tripitinc.com.

(I would likely not have even noticed, but either WordPress itself or one of my plugins actually adds that info to the email it sends me letting me know that a comment has been recieved and is awaiting moderation).

So I emailed “Thomas” – using the yahoo.com address he provided – and suggested he disclose that in his comment.

I never heard back – perhaps the email wasn’t valid to begin with. So, I decided to post the comment, but also note what I had determined about its origin.

Lesson learned? It’s easier than you think to determine who you are when you do various things on the net. If you’re going to post comments on blogs that discussion your product(s), disclose your relationships. Nothing wrong with posting – I’ve had many comments from folks whose products/services I discuss in blog posts – but posting a comment like the above without disclosure is basically astroturfing, and it never works.