Just for interest’s sake, I extracted the comments table from my blog to see if I could come to any conclusions about the nature of blog commenting. My theory is that comments from non-bloggers have moved elsewhere: to Facebook and Twitter; to the recesses of the web that are difficult to plumb with any accuracy.

Of the past 1220 comments on this blog:

• 71% of the comments came from other bloggers, excluding myself.
• There’s been comments from 670 different people
• I’ve met every single one of the top twenty commenters in person, who account for about a quarter of all the comments.

So these days, while the readership is more diverse than ever, a large proportion of the conversation on this blog is taking place amongst a small group of people who know each other, which reaffirms the old adage about blogs being about community.

My theory about Facebook doesn’t however seem to come to much. Facebook lets you track the number of conversations on your shared items through Facebook Insights. While a huge number of people share or like my words on Facebook, there isn’t any notable conversation about them there, just a steady stream of more likes.

Long tail! Half of the commenters leave but a single comment.

Comments are in decline! Although this doesn’t take into account the frequency with which I post updates to the blog, so is meaningless.

Word cloud of every word in the comments. You people say “just like” quite often. Interpret as you will.