14 DAY TRIAL // Facebook's revamped Comments platform for websites is now available to everyone. Webmasters can embed the Comments Box plugin on their sites to add commenting functionality as well as authentication and comment moderation. The feature has been in testing for several months now, but some of the more advanced functionality, like comment voting, hasn't been included in the final product.
"Today, we’re launching updates to the Comments Box plugin with new moderation tools as well as features to improve the distribution and quality of comments on your site," Facebook announced.
"The upgraded Comments Box uses social signals to surface the highest quality comments for each user. Comments are ordered to show users the most relevant comments from friends, friends of friends, and the most liked or active discussion threads, while comments marked as spam are hidden from view," it announced.
There are other comments platforms out there, but Facebook's has the advantage of leveraging its big strengths, the social graph and real identities.
If you're already logged into your Facebook account, you will be able to start commenting on sites which implemented the plugin. Administrators can select between having all comments visible by default or for "limited visibility" meaning that the comments will only be seen by friends.
Since the comments are linked to your Facebook profile, your real name is used and others can see details about you such as age, friends and so on, depending on what you make publicly available on the social network.
Administrators can hide any comment they don't approve of and they can ban keywords and users. Comments from banned users or containing blocked words will have limited visibility, but will still be available to the user's friends.
Another big appeal of the Comments Box is the possibility to publish the comment on Facebook. By default, comments will show up in the News Feeds of friends, potentially drawing a new audience to your website.
Interestingly enough, you can use other accounts besides Facebook with the Comments Box. Initially, it was believed that both Google and Twitter would be able to be identity providers, but at launch, only Yahoo is offered as an alternative.
Other features that were in testing, such as the possibility to upvote and downvote comments as well as see a user's rating, based on how their comments were voted on by others, have not made it in the final product.