On the heels of its rollout of Graph Search and the revamped News Feed, Facebook is adding a feature that allows users to reply directly to comments within a thread. The improvement is aimed at achieving better-structured Facebook conversations.
Graph Search is Facebook's answer to Google Now. It makes searching for people, places and things a much more organic process. You can simply ask Facebook to tell you, for instance, which of your friends attended your alma mater and now live in New York. The revamped newsfeed is aimed at capatalizing on Facebook's status as the world's largest photo service, particularly in the wake of its acquisition of Instagram last year. Pictures take center-stage in the revamped newsfeed, as well as personlization.
The need for the new comment feature should be instantly familiar to anyone who's had to tag somebody in a comment to reply to a post at the beginning of a thread. That mechanic is cumbersome at best.
Users will need to opt-in to receive the feature and Facebook won't be rolling it out to all accounts. Intra-thread comments will only be enabled for accounts with more than 10,000 followers. Additionally, the feature will not be available on the Facebook mobile app at first — only appearing on the desktop-facing client.
Here's Facebook's announcement of the feature, posted by journalism program manager Vadim Lavrusik:
"Starting today, we're launching a new comments feature designed to improve conversations."
"You and your readers will have the ability to reply directly to comments left on your Page content and start conversation threads, which will make it easier for you to interact directly with individual readers and keep relevant conversations connected. Also, the most active and engaging conversations among your readers will be surfaced at the top of your posts ensuring that people who visit your Page will see the best conversations."
"You will be able to opt-into Replies through the Page admin panel in the Manage Permissions section where you will see a prompt to turn Replies on. Once you opt-in, you will be able to opt-out but all Pages will have the feature enabled on July 10, 2013. Also, the feature will be automatically turned on for profiles with more than 10,000 followers. At launch, this feature will only be available on desktop and we plan to make it available in the Graph API and mobile in the future."
"After months of testing, we have seen how the new feature can improve conversations and be used to start open dialogues with the community."
