Facebook rolls out new threaded conversations feature

26 Mar 2013

Social network Facebook has released a new conversation threads feature that lets users and readers reply to individual comments.

But before you all get excited the new feature is only available for Page owners and public figures with more than 10,000 followers.

“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 programme manager at Facebook.

“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 move suggests Facebook is doubling down on its constituent media page owners by offering them a mechanism to grow community engagement.

Lavrusik said page owners will be able to opt-into Replies through the Page admin panel in the Manage Permissions section where you will see a prompt to turn Replies on. “Once you opt-in, you will be able to opt-out but all Pages will have the feature enabled on July 10, 2013.”

He continued: “At launch, this feature will only be available on desktop and we plan to make it available in the Graph API and mobile in the future,” Lavrusik said.

He said that the new conversation threads will be re-ordered by relevance to views and may appear differently to each person based on their connections.

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John Kennedy is a journalist who served as editor of Silicon Republic for 17 years

editorial@siliconrepublic.com