Cafe Society has a new commenting platform

By Cafe Society Thu., Jul. 19 2012 at 5:02 PM

Today Cafe Society (and all the other Westword blogs) rolled out a new user profile platform dubbed My Voice Nation. Your voice in our comments section will now be amplified through a fancy new commenting program called Lifefyre ("live fire"). Read all about it below. (And forgive us any glitches in the early hours of transition.)

Livefyre and My Voice Nation

SocialSync:

When there's a conversation about an article on Facebook or Twitter, you can now see that conversation within the commenting thread. You can also tag and import your friends from Twitter and Facebook within the comment stream yourself.

True Real Time:

You can see who is listening to a conversation and read comments in real time, making it easier to jump right into the discussion.

Notifications:

You can choose to be alerted via e-mail when someone replies to or likes your comment.

One Platform:

My Voice Nation is a global profile system for all of our properties. Soon you'll be able to follow your favorite authors and topics, creating a customized experience. Starting today, your My Voice Nation profile is linked with your Livefyre account as one log-in. You no longer need a My Voice Nation account to write a review on Voice Places and a separate Disqus account (our previous commenting platform) to comment on our stories; your My Voice Nation is your one account for everything.

Follow Your Friends, Enemies or Frenemies:

You'll be able to see what your friends are saying and doing on our publications and Voice Places with this one account.

Easy Sign-Up:

To sign up, just click "Sign in" in the new comments section. You can sign up with Facebook, Twitter, Yahoo, Google or your e-mail. And yes, it's still possible to comment anonymously, if you'd like.

That's all there is to it! Questions? Comments? Drop them below.

Follow @CafeWestword

Tags:

Cafe Society, Commenting, Housekeeping, LiveFyre, My Voice Nation

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DonkeyHotay topcommenter

It's LAME !

Behold the many deficiencies of the new Livefyre comment system vs. DISQUS --

1) Cannot EDIT posts, to correct errors or mistakes. Livefyre speciously claims that allowing editing would affect discussion continuity -- but they allow DELETING the entire post, which breaks any continuity.

2) Message THREADING is limited to only 2 replies! -- After that, reply branching stops and all additional comments are simply stacked in a single pile. This absurd dysfunction makes robust discussions with multiple users impossible to follow. That's so Web 1.0.

3) MOBILE integration FAILS completely. Does not function with mobile platforms.

4) Claims to offer REAL TIME updates of Messages and posting Activity -- Numerous user activity profiles are stuck and frozen DAYS in the past, with only a fraction of their posts, or posts of friends being followed, showing in profiles / activity.

5) Follow that Story fails completely. No new posts to stories being followed appear in a user's activity profile.

6) Clicking on another User's icon to view their profile often times mistakenly links to your own profile / activity.

7) Way too much emphasis on Twitwit and Failbook. Are tweenagers their target market?

Was this system even Beta tested before implementation across the entire Village Voice network? ... "real time" updating it ain't.

notgood

no more posting anon AND you cannot correct typos

Denver Dave topcommenter

I think I'm going to be OK with it. There have been a few glitches so far but that's to be expected. I like some of the new features. Not sure what it cost but it doesn't seem to be a radical improvement. Time will tell - just like all changes in technology, it takes a little time for users to adapt.

Bagwhan

The old system showed how many comments there were from the main page, such as "Write Comment (5)". That was helpful in seeing where the discussions were. If this system could bring that back, that'd be great.