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Facebook fixes comment threads for Pages and public figures

With conversation threads, the social network addresses a problem its most important customers experience daily: a deluge of crappy comments.

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Jennifer Van Grove Former Senior Writer / News
Jennifer Van Grove covered the social beat for CNET. She loves Boo the dog, CrossFit, and eating vegan. Her jokes are often in poor taste, but her articles are not.
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Jennifer Van Grove
Facebook conversation threads
Facebook
Facebook today announced the release of conversation threads, a new comments feature designed to organize and structure the often unruly comment threads on Pages and high-trafficked profiles.

Conversation threads, available for Page owners and public figures with 10,000 followers or more, allow people to click a "reply" button, which sits alongside the "like" button, to respond directly to an individual comment and engage in a branched-off discussion.

facebook conversation thread sportscenter
SportsCenter hosted a Super Bowl chat with Herm Edwards, where viewers were able to ask questions and get direct responses from the former NFL coach and player. The most active conversations during the Q&A were surfaced higher in the thread, Facebook said. Facebook
The social network said that it's featuring the most active conversations atop posts, and re-odering the threads by relevance to each viewer. A Facebook member may find a particular conversation thread higher if they share connections to participants in a thread, for instance.

"After months of testing, we have seen how the new feature can improve conversations and be used to start open dialogues with the community," Vadim Lavrusik, Facebook journalism program manager, wrote in a note posted to the social network.

The alteration corrects for a problem that Facebook's most important customers experience on a daily basis: a deluge of crappy comments. Brands and Facebook celebrities with hundred of thousands of followers are plagued by crummy comments, which often bury the more worthwhile nuggets posted to updates. Conversation threads partially remedy the issue and should allow brands and public figures to pinpoint and highlight the best discussions.

Facebook said the new threading feature is available only on the desktop for the time being.