You'd think this would be an easy question to answer. Either there are or there aren't, and surely it's just a case of counting? But as we've discussed before, comments are a fickle breed. A fascinating post can gather no comments because people have nothing to add, while a throwaway post can gather tons of comments if it hits a nerve. So something a little more scientific is required. And I think we're heading for the answer "yes".
[I don't want this to sound like sour grapes. I know I'm damned fortunate to get any comments at all. I don't publish posts with the expectation that other people ought to comment on them, nor do I sulk if few people bother. But if the number of comments on offer is in decline, then this might well be a trend across a greater number of blogs than just my own. And well worth discussing in depth]
Evidence 1: Tuesday's post didn't get many comments
What do you mean, didn't get many? That "Mayor of Londo" post got 23 comments for heavens sake, and that's loads! Except I was expecting more. Based on past experience, I had a gut feeling that a cunning sarky post about Mayor Boris might get nearer 30. And it didn't, things spluttered out well before that. Sorry, this is all sounding very subjective, isn't it? Let me try something more convincing.
Evidence 2: Yesterday's post didn't get as many comments as the last time I posted it
Sorry, but yesterday's post was a repeat. Admittedly an updated repeat with additional information, but essentially identical in thrust and tone to the post I published on Wednesday 22nd November 2006. The same message each time, but two years apart. So response levels to this post should be a fairly good barometer to see if comment numbers have dipped. And yes they have, by roughly 20%.
date of posting
number of comments
in the first 24 hours
22 Nov 2006
34
24 Sep 2008
28
Slightly more convincing, maybe? But still very much open to statistical variation, obviously, and by no means a watertight case. So I need to dig deeper.
Evidence 3: Yesterday's post didn't get as many comments as last time I posted it, even though I now have more visitors
Yes, I get more visitors to this site than I did two years ago, which is nice. Not hugely more, but more. And you'd think more visitors would mean more comments, but no, the opposite appears to be the case.
date of posting
number of comments
number of visitors
visitors per comment
22 Nov 2006
34
821
24
24 Sep 2008
28
912
33
Back in 2006 one in every 24 visitors left a comment, but now that's decreased to one in every 33. Every comment today requires about 40% more visitors than used to be the case. There, these figures are a bit more scientifically sound, aren't they? Although I suspect I can do even better...
Evidence 4: The number of visitors per comment has trebled over the last five years
I have vaultfuls of past blog statistics to draw on, so it's not difficult to tot up the average number of visitors I've received each year and to compare that to the average number of comments. This is for all posts, not just a few popular ones. From this I can calculate how many visitors I need, on average, before one of them leaves a comment. And look, commenting activity really is getting significantly quieter.
year
average number of
visitors per comment
2003
18
2004
19
2005
27
2006
46
2007
42
2008
58
Back in "the old days", about one in every 20 blog readers left a message. That's a phenomenally high response rate - perhaps reflecting more of a sense of community than we see today. And now it's more like one in every sixty. The other 59 of you just read and move on. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, of course, because there are a lot more blogs out there and you lot only have a finite amount of time to interact with each one. Reading takes long enough, and commenting can become just an occasional extra.
Except, hang on, I believe the situation is even more pronounced than I've described above. And it's all the fault of this little orange square . I first advertised my blog's RSS feed back in early 2006, and ever since then more and more of you have been creeping off to feedreaderland to read my blog there. That's fine, because you still get to read what I wrote (even if it doesn't always quite look the same). But it also means you don't have access to my comments. You can't read them and, more importantly, you can't add to them unless you click through and read my blog on the proper page. It's not rocket science - the more readers who switch to RSS feeds, the fewer comments I'm likely to get. So for more accurate results I've added my RSS subscribers numbers to my visitor numbers to get a total number of blog "readers". And let's see how considering readers rather than visitors shifts the statistics.
Evidence 5: Readers make eight times fewer comments than they used to five years ago
year
proportion of
you using RSS
average number of
readers per comment
2003
0%
18
2004
0%
19
2005
0%
27
2006
20%
58
2007
45%
76
2008
60%
145
Let's just unpick this. Before 2006 everyone who wanted to read my blog had to come to diamondgeezer.blogspot.com, and about one in 20 of them left a comment. Today 60% of the people who read my blog don't come to diamondgeezer.blogspot.com, they read it elsewhere. Which means that a majority of my readers now read this blog in a comment-free zone, buried deep in some feedreader somewhere, rather than visiting the homepage I serve up to them. And that's why I now need an amazing 145 readers, rather than 18, in order to attract each individual comment.
And I'm not complaining, really I'm not. But blimey, there really has been a seismic shift in blogging over the past few years, hasn't there? A genuine shift towards passive consumption rather than active interaction. More RSS usage means quieter comments boxes. Most of you read, but you don't respond. I'm sure that the one in 145 of you who contribute to my comments will have plenty to say about that. But I guess we'll never know what the other 144 of you think.
. I first advertised my blog's RSS feed back in early 2006, and ever since then more and more of you have been creeping off to feedreaderland to read my blog there. That's fine, because you still get to read what I wrote (even if it doesn't always quite look the same). But it also means you don't have access to my comments. You can't read them and, more importantly, you can't add to them unless you click through and read my blog on the proper page. It's not rocket science - the more readers who switch to RSS feeds, the fewer comments I'm likely to get. So for more accurate results I've added my RSS subscribers numbers to my visitor numbers to get a total number of blog "readers". And let's see how considering readers rather than visitors shifts the statistics.
