Facebook launching third party commenting platform

This new technology could see Facebook as the engine behind the comments system on many high-profile blogs and other digital publications.

The company is actively seeking major media companies and blogs to partner with it for its launch, part of a bigger media industry move spearheading in part by the recent hires of Nick Grudin and Andy Mitchell, media business development executives with respective track records at Newsweek and The Daily Beast.

With this update Users can use the platform by logging in through Facebook or Twitter. Comments are threaded, and can be voted up ("Liked") and Comments can be synced across a publisher's site and Facebook Page, meaning that a comment made on a publisher’s site will show up on its Facebook Page, and vice versa.

"Based on feedback from developers about ways to improve our existing comments plugin, we're testing an updated plugin that leverages authenticity and social relevancy to increase distribution. We're testing the plugin on our Facebook Blog and Developer Blog but have no further details to share at this time," a facebook spokesperson wrote.

Currently, some publishers allow users to log in to their sites using their Facebook credentials, enabling users to cross-post their comments to Facebook as status messages or wall posts. The new commenting platform will potentially allow for a much deeper — and more harmonious — integration between Facebook and third-party sites.

According to sources, Facebook wants to power the commenting systems of digital publishers and blogs around the Web. This would be a further step beyond other third-party tools the company has already offered, such as those allowing the association of comments with Facebook profiles and the use of "Like" and "Share on Facebook" buttons.

These features have quickly become nearly ubiquitous on the Internet, and the new commenting engine could eventually be similarly popular.

Other companies, such as Disqus and Echo, have had success offering their own third party comment systems by streamlining maintenance issues that once represented a notorious time-suck for digital publishers.

But Facebook is Facebook, and if they get on the playing field, the momentum of their brand and the size of their userbase will no doubt shake things up.

Their system, while still somewhat thin on details, is likely to further bridge the gap between usernames and real world identities, with the argument being that transparency improves the quality of discourse.

And the company will be one move closer to establishing what could be its legacy: supplanting anonymity as the default mode of the Internet.