The importance of online reviews is pretty well documented, with a positive review substantially improving your business prospects. A new study has looked at whether the comments we receive on blogs and articles has a similar impact.
The study, conducted by MIT researcher Sinan Aral, explored over 100,000 comments on a news aggregation site (such as Digg or Reddit), and found that the first comment left on an article has a considerable influence over the comments that follow.
He found that when a positive comment was left on an article, there was a 32% higher chance that the following comment would also be positive. What’s more, a positive initial comment was also 25% more likely to result in an overall positive review of the article by all readers.
The researchers believe this is evidence of a kind of herding effect. The 2nd reader of the article sees the positive feedback, and becomes more likely to follow suit, which in turn will influence the 3rd reader, and so on.
“This is the behavior that underlies ‘bubbles,’ whether in real estate or the stock market,” Aral said. “It inflates the value of things above their actual value in society.”
Purely positive
Interestingly, the same did not apply in a negative sense. If the initial comment left was a negative one, whilst a small number followed suit with a similarly negative comment, even more people responded with positive ones.
“These online ratings are actually changing opinion in a biased way,” Aral said. “They are affecting people’s judgments, or perceptions on quality.”
So, if you want your blog to be well received, it seems getting a strong first comment is crucial.
I'm not surprised that the whole social proof thing exists, but it's fascinating that it only really applies one way. Very interesting.
There was also some research into comments from earlier this year that found that the tone of the comments on scientific articles had a strong bearing on the perception of the article by the reader.
http://phys.org/news/2013-02-trolls-rude-blog-com…
Interesting stuff, Adi. Intuitively, it seems to make sense from past experience on various blogs and seeing comments left here and there. So it's always good to see intuition validated by research. Funny thing, though: you may want to read this story, where the first few comments were actually positive (sort of), but then things turned sour for this US airport facebook page: http://www.convinceandconvert.com/facebook/when-f…
Cheers,
Frederic
Yeah it's an interesting one isn't it? I read a fair few news sites and many of the comments are negative in tone, so there are clearly sites out there that don't conform to the 'rule'.
I didn't know that the first comment was so important. But I do know that social proof is really important. When you have a blog that seems to be getting limited engagement, few shares and no comments, it almost feels like you are walking into an isolated desert or somewhere you don't want to be. I've been told several times by prospective clients that they've visited my blog and liked the fact that I seem to have an engaged audience and so I know from personal experience that social proof will mean the difference between me getting a project and not getting it. That's why getting comments is really like ensuring that I have my bread and butter:)
Like a modern day peer review process I suppose.
That's interesting, and I think it also goes to show that there is a limited set of "trolls" (the people who will be negative out of the gate) and most people just want to be part of the conversation. All the more reason to ignore them. Makes you want to hire a professional commenter 🙂
It is the psyche in people. We tent to make our decisions or perceive based what we see or hear. If people give you positive likes on any social media platform, chances are that many more will automatically like you. It is the same science with raising children: If a child is raised by a bully or was abused as a child, research has shown that they tend to be like there parents. You would think they would hate it since they saw it but it turns out that the behavior was imprinted in their brains.