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A Review of Livefyre
If you visit Spin Sucks often, you already know about Livefyre, the commenting system we’ve been using since September. It’s been in beta until last week and yesterday I received an email from CEO and founder, Jordan Kretchmer, that the rollout of the full launch is finished.
I was waiting until now to extol all the great things about Livefyre so that, if you’re convinced, you can install the plugin.
A few of the features they want you to know:
- Blazing fast performance upgrades
- New comment stream design and features (you also can post your comment to Twitter or Facebook, if you want)
- New sign-in options (Google, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Livefyre, or your own account)
- Mobile commenting (it works on your phone and tablet; I know because I’ve tried)
- Advanced moderation where you can ban users or delete comments right on the blog instead of going into your admin
- Enterprise-level scaling and stability
I love all of the features listed above, but what I love more is the ability to create an engaged community.
Since we began using the system six months ago, we’ve found:
- Traffic is up 99 percent
- Pageviews are up 86 percent
- Comments are up 27 percent (on average)
- Tweets are up 121 percent (through the TweetMeme button)
- Visits from Facebook are up 139 percent
- Organic search is up 98 percent
- Engagement points are up 68 percent (as tracked by PostRank)
We also were added to the AdAge Power 150 and have climbed from 95 (where we entered) to 53 (today). And, on Technorati, we’ve moved from 105 to 29 among business blogs.
Of course, not all of this is due to Livefyre (I’d like to think the content has something to do with it), but it gives you a measurable look at how it works.
But what I really, really love? Tagging people in the comments and the ability to receive only ONE email for all of the comments. For instance, if you comment on this blog post and want to talk about one of your friends, you can tag them via one of your social networks by using the @ sign. And, if people leave a bunch of comments within one hour, Livefyre aggregates all of them into one email. I love that!
We’ve had to be patient during the beta testing: Some of you haven’t been able to comment, some have been told you can’t like a comment, and some of you haven’t been able to tag. Internet Explorer doesn’t seem to work, but Firefox works brilliantly. All of that seems to be minor because Jordan, Jenna Langer, Jeremy Hicks, and the rest of their team really listen and respond. I’ve never seen them get defensive to criticism, but I have seen them listen and make changes, based on our feedback.
So what are you waiting for? Install the plugin already!
P.S. If you’ve had experience with Livefyre (here, on your blog, or on another’s blog), I’d love to hear your feedback.
We turned on Livefyre this AM, and it's imperfect, but pretty impressive. Comments here: http://answerguy.com/2013/04/04/comments-optimization-influency/
@theanswerguy I think you'll really like it!
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@ginidietrich @theanswerguy Gini, I'm hoping to, but we're running into some kinda of disturbing issues already. Of course <grin> I AM the answer guy, so what would you expect? ;-)
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I agree, this is a great comments system, I´m using it in my blog as well, by the way feel free to go there and review my work http://javier.la
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I'm wondering what version of Livefyre you have installed here - I can post here but not on another site (just see a spinning icon) so maybe a newer version is available for that other site? Thanks!
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@swaziX It's an older version. I haven't been able to upgrade to the newer version yet.
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Test out the system, liking the SEO potential a lot. Going to give it a go and see how she flys.
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I just installed at my site for it's 3rd anniversary. I think it blows Disqus and Intense Debate out of the water.
Your article motivates me to keep it on my site. I can't wait to see how it is going to improve my site. :-)
Latest blog post: Livefyre Comments on Dummies of the Year!
@Scholar Mel This is true. Disqus never load easily these days it seems that they already gave up.
I'd also like to add that Livefyre has a really great support system. I wish that the tagging feature worked on @dummyiq like it does on most blogs but I think that has more to do with my theme than the plugin.
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I wonder whether livefyre keeps all posted comments.
I lost 150 comments with Disqus about 7 months ago
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I'm definitely installing livefyre on my updated blog. Used disqus on the old one, but I'll be switching over - livefyre has some fantastic features.
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Really interested in LiveFyre and this post really helped me to trust that it's worth testing out. Thanks for that!
Me too! I will convert my WP site this week. It may be the first and only time that I get ahead of my techno mentor @kirsten winkler
She will be sooooo jealous if I can get a good social engagement on my blog. Truthfully I have been ignoring the social engagement thingy. I am about to launch a major new direction for our Edupunk-Edupurenuer-Edutainment site with podcasting.
The nly thing missing from this "Livefyre" plugin is a spell checker!
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Just checked out LiveFyre at the BlogWorld Explo LA and I'm stoked to get this up and running on our site @yogahub
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@harlankilstein I think Livefyre might be the way to go, esp. since they pull twitter and Facebook comments back into the blog.
Info PR: 3 I: 0 L: error LD: error I: 1,030 Rank: 32165 Age: January 14, 2007 I: 1 whoissourceRobo: yesSitemap: no Rank: 291749 Price: 509 Links: 36(1)|95(6) Density
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You will have to explain "blazing fast." I made LiveFyre account and still can never, ever get in to commen on a blog uing LiveFyre with their auth pop-up. I have to open a seperatewindow, go to livefyre.com, and still cannot log-in with the username and password I used; must do so via Twitter or Facebook!
Tried DISQUS yet? Now that's fast - and it works.
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@osakasaul I actually never use the login on Livefyre. I always just login with my Twitter account.
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How do you login with twitter or FB account? It still requires me to make a Livefyre account?
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@worthyofchoice Log out. And when you click "post comment," it'll bring up a Livefyre box and a box with a bunch of social network icons.
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@osakasaul I tried Disqus. TWICE. Really liked it, but it would never sync correctly with WordPress. I was constantly having to resync it to get comments to display properly, and I kept receiving database errors. Their tech support was very responsive, but essentially gave me the "deactivate all your other plugins and reactivate them one by one until you find the cause," which is tech-support-speak for, "It's not our problem...good luck with that."
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@osakasaul Did you forget your login info, it's pretty fast to me (no I'm not trying to be funny, that happens to me with Intense Debate).
Gini, thanks for doing all the hard work and reviewing the commenting options so I don't have to. I'm getting a new blog set up now and decided to incorporate Livefyre because I used it on your blog and you spent considerable time making your informed choice. My job is made just a little easier every time I can steal a bit of your personal brilliance.
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@johnheaney LOL! Now I know how @dannybrown feels every time I steal something from him!
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@ginidietrich@johnheaney Not really - John's just done it the once. You've made a career out of it... ;-)
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I'm hoping they add a comment as guest feature soon, that's maybe the one thing I've noticed so far that they really need.
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@Brandon J. It doesn't bother me not to have a guest feature. I like knowing who I'm talking to! :)
@ginidietrich lol well you do have a point, but on the other hand as new guy on the scene I need to provide every incentive to comment as I can, plus I don't mind going troll hunting.... Then again I just started using Disqus and I notice a lot of people have disdain towards it even with the guest comment feature.
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@Brandon J. I probably shouldn't tell you this, but I have a friend who has created a different identity so he can troll. No one said you had to sign in as yourself.
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I am considering LiveFyre for my blog and am impressed by all the positive reviews from bloggers like you. Furthermore, my experiences with @livefyre support so far have been second to none... very responsive and courteous. I have to admit, I am a little attached to CommentLuv at the moment, which is making the decision a difficult one. I have used Disqus and Intense Debate as well and, while they are worthy systems, they just seem a little too 'busy' for me. Great read, Gini, thank you.
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@Darren Sproat Rumor has it Livefyre will soon have a CommentLuv feature so the decision won't be so difficult very soon.
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@ginidietrich I've used Disqus for such a long time (I use them on my two primary sites at present). They do just about everything I need in a comment system and so I've been hesitant to change to much of anything else.
Today however, that's changed. I'm sitting here on a Sunday afternoon fixing a few things on my site and decided to take the leap and install livefyre. I'm going to give it a test-drive for 30 days and see how it goes :-)
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@ginidietrich There's one or two things I wish they'd change, but otherwise, so far so good. Hope you're having an epic Sunday and enjoy the basketball game if you're into that sorta thing :-)
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@Ari Herzog @Ricardo Bueno Mine went surprisingly well. Here's my review, with some incredible numbers, considering the login requirement: http://t.co/LtkUtrR
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