Disruptive Conversations

Have you been in Facebook lately and noticed how quickly comments appeared from other people on a status update? Did you almost feel like they were updating in "real-time"?

I had personally experienced on some highly-commented updates and now we know why... Facebook rolled out "Live Commenting" to all users over the past weeks.

The Facebook blog post goes into some of the gory details, which I personally find fascinating but I know others may not. It also has some fascinating stats:

every minute, we serve over 100 million pieces of content that may receive comments. In that same minute, users submit around 650,000 comments that need to get routed to the correct viewers.

From a user perspective, this continues the blending within Facebook of "asynchronous" communication, where you post something and wait for responses, with "synchronous" communication that is more real-time like Facebook Chat can be.

Status updates are becoming more like IM chats/conversations... and from Facebook's point-of-view, that's great because it undoubtedly means people will stay in Facebook even longer. If you comment and then see another comment come in, you'll stay to read... and potentially reply... and do it again...

It's all about the eyeballs... and keeping people there.

Well... and "enabling better communication" between Facebook users, of course.... which leads to people staying there.

Facebook continues to be evolving in fascinating directions... this is yet another step.

What do you think? Have you noticed this new change?

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