One of the problems with the comment systems on Facebook and Google+ is that replies can get buried and busy conversations can be difficult to follow. For example, you may want to reply to something from three comments ago, but your reply gets lost in the clutter. Thanks to a nice new enhancement from Facebook, that will no longer be an issue.
The feature works easily enough — your comment will appear indented immediately below the comment you’re replying to, making it clear to everyone where your reply was directed.
For now this only works on Pages (not on personal profiles) and needs to be enabled by the Page administrator. If you run a page, go into your admin panel to the “Manage Permissions” section and you’ll see the option for replies near the bottom of that page. We’ve activated it on the GreenMellen page if you’d like to try it for yourself.
This feature will automatically be enabled for everyone on July 10, 2013.
In addition, comments won’t necessarily appear in the order in which they were posted. According to Facebook there are three criteria that will factor into them:
- Positive Feedback: the amount of positive feedback based on the total number of Likes and Replies in a conversation thread, which includes Likes or Replies by the Page owner.
- Connections: connections to participants in a thread may move the conversation higher. For example, conversations with Comments left by friends may appear at the top.
- Negative Feedback: the total number of spam reports in a thread, as well as marks-as-spam made by the Page owner. We also may down-rank comments made by frequent spammers.
While this feature is long overdue, it’s great to see it finally arrive!
