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Over 15,000 blogs use the Livefyre commenting system now including WPBeginner.com which I think is the lowest Alexa rated site using the Livefyre system to date (somebody correct me if I am wrong).
Meanwhile, it was a slow start for commenting on DragonBlogger.com with the Livefyre system but overall comments are increasing a little as my readers become more comfortable with the system. Only a few readers have reported problems but I do still have quite a bit of fallout from other WordPress bloggers who used to comment regularly but abandoned commenting when I switched from CommentLuv to Livefyre.
Probably what aggravated my readers the most was that my CommentLuv links for all the older 19,000+ comments were just simply lost, vanished. Even the former comments which had their usernames lost the backlink to their pages. All that time commenting to get a link back via CommentLuv was lost. I can understand their frustration and I do apologize for the inconvenience
The truth is I love CommentLuv and still use it on 2 of my blogs out of the 4 I administrate (I actively own and run 3, but I also do all the admin stuff for my wife’s cooking blog The Chefs Cookbook).
CommentLuv is great for building backlinks and knowing what a latest bloggers posts were all about. The thing is, my readership wasn’t all bloggers nor should it have been.
I was hammered with SPAM and even CommentLuv, GASP, Akismet…etc couldn’t stop me from moderating SPAM. Livefyre is vastly superior at blocking SPAM than any WordPress commenting system I have tried in the last 5 years. The impermium either catches the spam before it posts or cleans it up after it gets through the first pass. I only have about 2-3 hours per day that I do blogging activities and I was spending about 10% of my time just dealing with SPAM comments, not counting on the time spent engaging and replying to real readers comments.
Secondly, as I learned with the recent Pottermore articles I was getting lots of comments where no reader left a URL, just name and email. The vast majority of readers are not bloggers and have no backlink to leave. I also wanted a system that encouraged readers to not only share the article (I have buttons for that) but share that they commented in the article so they could bring people into their conversation. This is what Livefyre is also good at, and I found I have enjoyed joining and being apart of other Livefyre conversations on other sites.
The conversations within comments is something I have seen with Livefyre that is better than the default WordPress commenting system, it is also something you can’t get with CommentLuv. You can instantly pull someone into a conversation just by typing @username in the comment and you will hit up that person on Twitter or Facebook where they will be invited to directly join in your conversation. Yes, this can be abused but this can also be a great way to get feedback or attention for something important too.
Also, you still get a DoFollow backlink to your website/blog with Livefyre, so not all is lost. You also get a link back to your latest conversation if you comment on other Livefyre blogs which often is your own blog if you are also using Livefyre.
So after my initial 30 day review of Livefyre on DragonBlogger.com and JustinGermino.com I have decided to stick with it. I think it will improve even more when the guest commenting feature appears which should be soon and is the only feature Disqus has currently that Livefyre does not.
-Justin Germino
WPX Support
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