Depicting reader comments in a visual way
We’re all aware that washingtonpost.com has been able to do some cool stuff in recent years. One of their web ninjas, Steven King – editor of innovations – presented at BarCamp News Innovation Philadelphia and one of the lesser known ideas caught my attention.
It had to do with the way comments were visual shown in the WP’s online feature called OnBeing. It is the first time I’ve seen where comments were displayed this way and thought it was pretty cool.
In the photo above, the main piece of content is the image of the kid in a red and white striped shirt. The boxes connect to the main content area are the reader comments. You see some boxes are larger and some are closer to the main content than others.
“The larger comment threats get closer to the original content,” King said. “The comments on the peripheral of the topic stay on the outside. The more conversation pieces that break off the more value the conversations are.”
King said the three-person web ninja team is very visual, thus the idea of representing comments in a visible way. Not everyone likes it, but I do.
Has this been implemented? I checked the OnBeing site, and it looks like they still just have the same, ugly comments. From the screenshot, looks freaking cool.
Megan,
I am pretty sure that Mr. King said this functionality was going to released later this week or real soon. I agree, I does look pretty freakin’ cool. Thanks for the comment.
Jason