Given how nasty comments can sometimes be across the Social Web, it’s not surprising that some platforms are trying to downplay them. Nick Denton, the founder & CEO of Gawker Media, wants to highlight comments and make them even more prominent.
Today, Denton is schedule to announce updates to Kinja, a Gawker propriety, which, in a sense, elevates comments. When users sign up on Kinja, they receive a Web address, just as they would on Facebook or Tumblr. This address will be an aggregation of that person’s comments on stories on Gawker sites, including Gizmodo, Lifehacker and Jezebel, which currently have 36 million unique visitors a month. Moreover, Kinja will let readers create their own headlines and summaries for not just Gawker content, but content surfaced from other websites as well. In this sense, it becomes a competitor for content platforms such as Scoop.it – and, to an extent, Tumblr.
The move is an incredibly smart one, as it keeps people on Gawker properties for longer. In a leaked 2012 memorandum, Denton told his team that Gawker Media page view growth was slowing, as their audience was more likely to discuss a story on Facebook or Twitter. Kinja is an intelligent move to keep users on an “owned” platform rather than its “rented” social channels on Facebook, Google+, and more. Kinja gives Gawker many more page views, if executed and grown properly, and reverses the trend.
Is your company doing enough to keep users on your owned media?