37Signals Jumps Shark – Ends 6-Year Conversation

I’ve read Signal vs. Noise for a good chunk of it’s 6 years. More in it’s early days, less lately – but it’s still in my aggregator. Jason Fried and the gang and 37signals has always made me think and MNteractive gets a good chunk of traffic from our comments over there.

A couple days back, Jason asked his readers if “we jumped the shark”. Surprisingly, many comments said ‘yes’. Tonight, citing “the negative energy filling up the threads” Jason turned off the commenting at Signal vs. Noise.

Here at MNteractive.com, first-time commenters are moderated. That’s simply a response to the amount of comment spam we get. So, if you comment here and it doesn’t show up immediately – no worries – it will shortly and if it doesn’t – feel free to contact me directly.

Two things come to mind:

  1. MNteractive doesn’t have 16,000 subscribers to our RSS feed or anywhere near 100 comments per post. Hell, I was bouncing off the walls with the 20 comments in the recent ‘end of recording industry‘ post.
  2. I’m of the belief that in a transparent environment like weblogs any “negative energy” bounces back to the snotty author. Then again, see point #1.

With the WebTwoOh vibe of openness and reader-contributed information – this move is akin to locking the doors on the best neighborhood coffee shop, or – well – jumping the shark. Given how frequently the guys at 37signals explicitly ask their readers how to solve a specific problem or position an offering – this is one of the stupidest things they themselves could do.

Kottke.org, a blog I’ve read as long as SvN also doesn’t have comments, nor does Seth Godin’s blog. Instead, they have trackbacks – a linking-mechanism to connect posts across weblogs. This distributes the conversation across many blogs rather than the hoisting the entire comment burden on the original blogger. Trackbacks eliminate the risk that one anonymous commenter will control the comment thread.

When Jason turned off comments – he turned his back on the community and conversation he build over the past 6 years. If Jason and the rest of the 37signals gang still believe in the power of weblogs and the community it builds – they’ll open up the trackbacks. Otherwise, I think they’ve lost their voice of credibility, a pile of loyal readers, and even worse – customers.