Facebook is at it again. Just a few days after it did massive justice onto their time line by unveiling a new timeline, they then decided to introduce the use of hash tags a feature commonly found on Twitter. However even before the hash tags were unveiled they have decide to unveil the use of replies on the comments. This bring in a new threaded Replies commenting system for users with more than 10,000 followers as well as Pages linked to brands and businesses. The catch with this however is that it will only be limited to users with high engaging rates and those with a large number of followers.
Facebook says “the most active and engaging conversations will be shown at the top of your posts,” which should encourage Page owners to be more active in replying to comments — brands will want examples of good customer service and conversation being highlighted like that. This means that the system will also place the most “liked” conversation logs at the top of its related post; in a hope improve interactions between groups and their readers. This actually makes some sense since if a comment has been liked more then it means that you might be willing to read it more than that which is less liked. However, it means that time chronological order that used to be the ranking matrix previously will be done away with.
However, here is some good news: Rarely does Facebook offer us a chance to opt-in or out, but this time they did. Qualified profiles were able to opt-in to the feature as from yesterday. The company however, advises that it will be activated for all Pages and profiles with more than 10,000 followers on July 10 this year. As of now Replies is only supported on the site’s desktop version, but Facebook plans to add this feature to its Graph API and mobile applications.
Replies allow users to address each comment individually, rather than replying further down the page which may not be noticed by the users who have left replies. This means that the previous way of trying to reply to someone by first mentioning them may soon be a thing of the past especially hoping that this is also introduced later to the normal users. It will also increase interaction between friends within a comment since it offers you a chance to reply directly to a specific individual.