Google may be launching their own third-party commenting platform to compete with the platform launched by Facebook last year. Comments made on websites using Google’s platform would be linked to users’ Google accounts, and the system would be tightly integrated with Google+.
This news comes from Saud Alhoawi, a blogger from Tech-WD who was reporting from g|saudi arabia. According to Alhoawi’s post (Google Translation), Google staff at the event discussed several upcoming products from Google. In addition to the commenting platform, which is intended to increase the visibility of Google+, Google staffers present also discussed Google’s forthcoming cloud storage service, Google Drive.
Early last year Facebook launched a third-party commenting platform. This platform allows websites of all kinds – blogs, news websites, pretty much any site that allows comments on its posts – to use Facebook for their comments. Comments made on a particular site show up in the user’s profile for their friends to see. There’s also a “Like” button for those who want to share but not comment. The platform has grown pretty popular in the year since its launch. It’s in use on a variety of sites including, for example, Netflix’s blog:
The Netflix blog makes for an interesting example, because it is hosted on Blogger, Google’s own blogging service. Google can’t be comfortable with Facebook stomping around in its own back yard, especially considering the difficulties they’ve had drawing a wider audience to Google+. A commenting platform like Facebook’s has the potential to drastically increase both Google’s presence and Google+‘s visibility across the web.
While these reports are being treated as new by many, they are actually confirmation of new we exclusively reported back in October. Jeremy Shoemaker of Shoemoney told WebProNews writer Chris Crum that a Google engineer had “alluded to the fact that Google might be developing a system with Google+ to allow people to comment.”
I’ve reached out to Google in hopes of getting confirmation from them about this commenting platform, but as yet have received no response.
What do you think? Is a commenting platform a good move for Google? Let us know in the comments.
