Last month Google announced that Blogger owners could now leave comments on blogs using their aspiring social media service Google+. Since then I have seen many people introduce Google+ to their websites and it seems to be growing in popularity every day.
I discussed 3 Reasons I Don’t Use CommentLuv on my blogs yesterday. In the article I mentioned that Ileane from Basic Blog Tips was a big advocate of CommentLuv. Shortly after I published the article Ileane had removed CommentLuv and added Google+ commenting on her site. It seems this is something she had been considering for a while. It will be interesting to see if more or less people leave comments on her blog.
Google+ comments have the same slick interface you will see on Google+. It’s an interesting move by Google as it is sure to get many people commenting through Google+.
There are lots of plugins out there that help you add Google+ to your website. For WordPress, check out Google+ Comments or the multi-tabbed Google+ Comments for WordPress. The latter also supports comments from Disqus, Facebook and WordPress.
I do love the interface of Google+ however Google+ comments is not something I plan on adding. My opinion of Google+ is the same as my opinion is about Facebook commenting. Not everyone uses Facebook or Google+. Therefore, if you add them to your website you need to offer another way for people to comment. Commonly, people place Google+ comments at the top of a page with the default WordPress commenting system below. I am strongly against this as it divides the discussion into two parts. I would rather use an external commenting system such as LiveFyre or Disqus that split the discussion into two parts.
If you feel that offering visitors two different systems for leaving comments is not that bad, I recommend giving it a try. The comments look great and it does not seem to be discouraging people from leaving comments.
Thanks,
Kevin