When it comes to commenting and holding conversations in comment sections on Facebook, users can reply to comments as they happen or tag a person in them to ensure people know who and what they’re replying to. Today, the social network introduced a new feature to comments – users now have the ability to reply directly to comments and start conversation threads on pages (not profiles).
“You and your readers will have the ability to reply directly to comments left on your Page content and start conversation threads, which will make it easier for you to interact directly with individual readers and keep relevant conversations connected,” said Vadim Lavrusik, journalism program manager, Facebook, in a blog post. “Also, the most active and engaging conversations among your readers will be surfaced at the top of your posts ensuring that people who visit your Page will see the best conversations.
The feature is available right now for Pages only, and Facebook will bring it to all pages with more than 10,000 followers by July 10, 2013. Users will be able to opt into the Replies through the Page admin panel and on the flip side, can turn off the option the same way. Pages are generally instigating discussion-style comments, so it makes sense the roll-out is starting here.
Pages can use the feature for sourcing questions, having conversations or opening up Q&A sessions. Conversation threads are re-ordered by relevance, including positive feedback based on the total number of Likes and Replies, connections to participants in a thread and negative feedback such as spam reports.