Google today announced that bloggers on its Blogger publishing platform can now enable a new Google+-powered commenting system for their sites. This means Blogger users can now use Google+ as a commenting platform for their blogs and comments from Google+ will automatically appear on their blogs, too.
Google has already enabled this new system on all of its official blogs.
This new commenting widget, Google says, will enable bloggers to “see activity from direct visitors, and from people talking about your content on Google+.” This, the company argues, will make it easier to engage with commenters, as all of the comments will be available in one place.
The comment widget actually looks quite nice. It’s automatically sorted by ‘top comments’ (the other option is ‘newest first’) and gives users the option to see everybody comments or just remarks from users in their own circles. Just like Google+, however, the system doesn’t allow for nested comments.
Google also argues that this will make life easier for readers who want to comment. They will get the option to comment publicly – or privately to their circles on Google+. Of course, both the blog owners and the readers will only see the comments they have permission to see.
To enable this, Blogger users simply have to flip a switch in their Blogger Dashboard. Older comments will also be imported into the new Google+ comment widget.
For now, this new commenting system is obviously restricted to Blogger, but it’s likely that Google is just using its own platform as a staging ground for a wider release in the future. In the long run, Google will likely want to use this to compete with Facebook comments. Facebook launched its commenting system back in 2009, though it’s not clear how many sites still use it. Just like for Facebook, a Google+-powered commenting system will likely increase the activity on the service as a whole.
