10 Shortcomings Of Facebook Comments Box

Facebook has just updated its social plugin Comments Box, which brings a lot of comments.

Comparing to the old version, the new Comments Box has some cool features, such as to cut spam comments, since people need to log in their Facebook to leave a comment; to increase blog traffic, since the comment will be posted to the user’s profile stream with a link back to your blog post as default; to interconnect easily, since there are both Like and Reply buttons for every comment; and so on.

Obviously, the Comments Box will make your blog look like a part of Facebook, which will bring some concerns.

10 shortcomings of Facebook Comments Box

The shortcomings are more than the advantages:

1. You can’t import the exist comments

If there are already comments in your blog, you can’t combine them with the Comments Box, which means you need to keep two different comment systems, or to drop the previous one.

2. You will slow down your blog speed

Since the Comments Box is running in Facebook servers instead of yours, its loading speed will be much slowly than that of your blog default comment system.

3. You can’t log in with any other service account

For those readers who doesn’t have a Facebook account, they can’t leave a comment.

4. You can’t get a link for every comment

You can’t link to a particular comment, since there is no permalink of it.

5. You can’t offer a blog backlinks

Some people like to leave comments with their blog URLs, in order to get some traffic back to their blogs. But there is no way for users to show their blog when leaving a comment in the Comments Box.

6. You can’t edit the comments

You can’t edit the comments, except to delete your own ones and to report the ones of others.

7. You can’t get comment notification

You won’t know when someone leaves a comment on your blog.

8. You can’t back up the comments

The comments are stored in Facebook servers I think, but you can’t back up them as you can do for the blog default comments.

9. You can’t know who like it

The users can like any comment easily just in one click, but you can’t see who they are.

10. Your Comments Box may be missing

If your readers are from China, Iran, Pakistan or/and any other country that blocks Facebook, they won’t see the Comment Box, unless visiting your sites with VPN services or some other anti-censorship tools.

Although there are so many shortcomings, the TechCrunch blog has added these Comments Box, exactly speaking, to the new posts, and for the old ones, it still keeps the Disqus system. But TechCrunch is such a big blog, whatever comment system it uses will work.

Free Nuts is smaller than TechCrunch and a part of its readers are from China, Iran, Pakistan and some other countries or areas which block Facebook, so I am not going to run the Comments Box in this blog. How about you? Will you run it in your blogs? Share with us by leaving a comment.

Related free web apps:

1. How to Add Facebook Social Plugins to Your Blog
2. Countries That Block Facebook
3. Livefyre or Disqus?
4. How To Customize Twitter And Facebook Official Share Buttons
5. 2 Problems You Should Know When Using Livefyre