UNIT 2016 presentation: http://www.unit-festival.com/

1. Difficulties of Creating Large-
Scale Community
Huffington Post’s Conversations and The Future of Commenting

2. Conversations Platform Goals
1. High-quality conversations become content in their own right
2. Comments power “Community-drive Pages”: positive feedback loop
3. Increased engagement and readership
4. Metrics for success:
a. Engagement
b. Comment volume

3. Why talk about a dead product?
1. Lessons learned from missteps are valuable
2. Idea did work but not at scale
3. Problem still exists -- nobody has done it right yet

18. UI Requirements
Indentation can’t indicate reply
Threads should be able to go on forever
The top comment shouldn’t be favored
Design should be mobile-first

19. DEMO

20. Results
Vocal negative feedback
Metrics met:
Engagement - no significant increase
Comment volume - no significant increase
Conversation depth - significant increase, average 10% at depth of 10 or higher
Quality - slight uptick in comment length

21. Costs and Maintenance
Significant moderation costs:
Human moderation
Moderation system maintenance
Engineering resources
4 dedicated employees
Systems resources
Data storage

23. Internal Factors

24. 1. End Goals alone don’t work
?

25. 2. Everyone needs to be on board

26. 3. Not everyone is a power user

27. 4. Consider costs at every step

28. External Factors

29. 1. Where’s the value?
?

30. 2. Trend away from publisher...

31. ...towards third-party providers

32. 3. Expectations & Focus
PUBLISHER
Reader’s experience
Journalist integrity
Brand management
Legal compliance
COMMENTER
Freedom of speech
Freedom of expression
Ownership of user-generated content
Feeling of “ownership”

33. The “Niche” Model (i.e. New York Times)
Pros:
Very high quality
Screened by editors
“Letter to the Editor” model
Cons:
Not scalable

34. The Reddit Model
Pros:
Independent
Conversation around anything with a link
Active community
Cons:
Community management issues

35. The Facebook Model
Pros:
Ubiquitous
State-of-the-art tech
Personalized networks
Cons:
Privacy/ownership of content

36. FACEBOOK INSTANT ARTICLES

37. Open to all publishers starting April 13, 2016

38. Q&A