The opportunity in blog comments

I have been reading and rereading Umair Haque's paper on user generated context. I have not fully digest its implications but one thing is clear to me: Harnessing context around the content to navigate the abundance of media is going to the key in creating value for users.

Let's take that logic and apply to one of the growing areas in social media: blog comments. How does blog comments help to surface the most interesting blogs? I don't think it might be as obvious as the question suggests.

First of all, let's understand what kind of complementary value does comments add to the blog posts:

• Adds additional perspectives, views et al beyond what was offered by the blog author
• Links to interesting examples or other relevant articles
• Provide facts or numbers that either refute or verify what the author has said

There might be more but I think the above covers a lot of the value that comments provide.

How do any of these help us in surfacing the most interesting blog posts?

Unfortunately, I don't have a direct answer. If you have thoughts on the importance of blog comments as context, do leave a comment.

Related:
If content is King....Context is Kingdom (hat tip to Dr Ramesh)

Posted in: conversational graph,idea generation