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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.

Announced on the Facebook developer blog, the Comments Box widget is embedded into your site through javascript, and basically enables Facebook-driven commenting.

Facebook users can leave comments using their Facebook identities, and when they do will also have the option to publish those comments back to their Facebook profiles. (This is already possible using the Facebook Connect APIs, but the comment box certainly simplifies the process).

Facebook Comments Box

What happens in the process, though, is that all your comments on your blog are no longer really on your blog. Those comments are actually submitted to Facebook, who stores them for you and shows them on demand when your pages containing the comment box load.

In WordPress terms, this means you’re not able to use Akismet, or Mollom, or OpenID, or ReCaptcha, or any of the other plugins you might be using on your site to manage comments. (You also won’t be able to use the WordPress iPhone app to moderate comments, since they aren’t submitted as comments to WordPress).

It also means that someday, when you decide to migrate away from the Facebook Comments Box, there’s no simple way to get all the comments out (and it isn’t clear whether the terms of service would allow you to do so even if it were simple).

The announcement is careful to note that:

The Comments Box allows non-Facebook users to make comments on your site as well.

But that feels a bit like “we’ll still allow you to use cash, even after we install the credit card machine” – it’s giving me back something I already had as though it were a bonus. It’s as though we’re at the point where “non-Facebook users” are, like “those with JavaScript disabled,” a community we magnanimously allow to continue to use the web but don’t really design for.

Like Yahoo Updates with JS-Kit, TypePad Connect, DISQUS, and IntenseDebate (though the last of these offers a comment import/export feature), this is yet another “all ur comments are belong to us” move, in which I think the hosting site loses more than it gains.

Or am I just a crusty old first-generation blogger thinking that I need to store away comments in a database I control, and I should really be more open to having my comments streams “in the cloud”?

See also:

• Facebook Launches Commenting Widget
• Facebook Connect Adds Cut-and-Paste Comments Widget
• Facebook Comment Widget: Quick Review
• Facebook invades your blog, rest of Web with new Comment Box

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.

What is TypePad Connect? It’s basically a drop in replacement for however your blog current handles comments – you swap out how you currently handle comments and use TypePad Connect instead.

Why would you do so?

TypePad Connect Benefits for Bloggers:

• Enables you to accept comments from users with OpenIDs or TypePad Connect Accounts, whether your blogging platform accepts OpenID or not
• Provides threaded comments, with avatars (for users who have TypePad Connect accounts)
• Links comments to profiles of the people leaving them (for users who have TypePad Connect accounts)
• Enables you to moderate and reply to comments via email
• Enables you to manage comments from multiple blogs in one place

What about blog readers? (Forgetting for the moment that many blog readers are also blog authors)

Benefits for users:

• OpenID. If you don’t have an OpenID, you can sign up for a TypePad Connect account and oyu will get one, though then you will likely use your TypePad Connect account to leave blog comments rather than your OpenID.
• A TypePad Connect profile – lifestream, avatar, etc.
• A comment feed – where you can track comments on posts you’ve also commented on, replies o your comments, etc. Provided, of course, the blogs you commented on use TypePad Connect (? I think).

So what do I see as the issues? Primarily they all follow from the idea that using TypePad Connect means replacing your blogging platforms built-in comment handling.

This means that:

• Comment-related plugins, search (of comments), moderation, anti-spam, and other features of your own blogging platform are disabled.
• Change your mind down the road, and decide you’d like to move to another platform? Can you get your comments back, or bring them with you? What if you move to a platform TypePad Connect doesn’t support?

Am I being too hard on SixApart? After all, they’re providing OpenIDs for all TypePad Connect profiles, enabling people to comment via OpenID. The profiles are also marked up with “rel=me” microformats, enabling the social graph style APIs to read them semantically.

Ultimately my concern isn’t with the TypePad Connect profile itself – if you don’t already have an existing lifestream and OpenID provider (Chi.mp, for example, or self-hosted like johneckman.com) it seems like a nice way to get one – but with the notion of replacing your blog’s comment moderation and management engine with an outsourced offering.

It seems too much like a shift towards a kind of walled-garden (to be fair, though, the content is open and available to all) of blog comments, in which users without TypePad Connect Profiles get a secondary experience.

It feels like a step backwards to ask users to create an account (albeit one which can be used on other sites too) just to be able to comment – but then nothing prevents users who have an existing OpenID, and a profile at that OpenID url, from using their existing “bring your own” style profile.

What do you think? Is TypePad Connect yet another step toward the open social web, or a step backwards in terms of openness?

For more on TypePad Connect, see the ReadWrite Web review, or the TypePad Connect page at SixApart.

If you’re not familiar with Coulton, two quick gems. First, Code Monkey:

Second, his great cover of Sir Mix-a-Lot’s Baby Got Back:

In the interview (transcript here if you prefer reading to listening – I’m quoting from the transcript), Coulton talks about his use of social media to create direct relationships with his audience, and why some approaches have been more effective than others:

Facebook and Myspace are essentially duplications of my blog and my email which I already have a blog and email so you know, I don’t, I sort of don’t understand why bands use something like Myspace unless the answer is they can’t, they don’t know how to make their own website

Guess it helped that Coulton was originally a software developer. More to the point, Coulton identifies the risk of closed social networks and cloud platforms:

I was always suspicious of Myspace because for the very simple reason that you don’t have direct access to your network, you only have it through Myspace. If Myspace ever goes away your network winks out of existence, you don’t have your emails you don’t have any way of getting in touch with them. You are completely dependent on Myspace.

And you know you look at what happened with Friendster you know, guess what social networks rise and fall pretty quickly. That what happened with Friendster and it’s sort of what’s happening with Myspace I guess and no matter how great and eternal you think a social network platform is it’s an illusion it’s going to go away. And so to spend all your time building up this Myspace network is I think has the potential to turn out not so well.

Well put. I also really liked his point about creative commons licensing, which he leveraged very effectively early in his (recent) career and continues to use:

. . . you know it was kind of a scary thing but I really just rationalised the thing, well let’s just get the attention now and worry about making the money later, and you know, if the worst thing that happens is a million people get one of my songs for free, like you know, that’s okay, that something I can build on. And I would rather have that happen than make $15 from my friends who buy it and nobody else can hear it, you know.

The interview also touches on Eventful, rickrolling, Wil Wheaton, Ze Frank, podcasting in general, YouTube, and (of course) Twitter.

Well worth a listen, especially but not exclusively if you’re and independent musician or wanna-be independent musician.