I'm brainstorming a new startup, and it crossed my mind how much of our online world revolves around comments. It's necessary for people to receive feedback, and to communicate with one another using the comment section. What if instead of comments though, there was some other way to leave feedback? Maybe a rating system in place of comments.<p>I want to see if comments are truly necessary- oftentimes I feel that comments are critical but way too bulky. I'm trying to cut out all the things that just aren't needed in order to launch.<p>*Edit: I'll clarify the question a little. I understand comments depends on what kind of site it is. Let's take a photo sharing site for example. I read recently somewhere that a company made a phone app that could let you wink, smiley face, or unhappy face at a photo instead of the generic comments you see.<p>I'm asking whether or not you could see alternatives to comments becoming a success by changing the commenting model as a whole. It's not about my site in particular, it's about comments itself. Do you see yourself satisfied with not being able to leave actual text as comments but instead having to wink, leave a smiley face, rate the photo?
I believe Path is what you are referring to with the emoticons. That was the first feature of Path that I found really innovative - it encourages greater participation because it's faster than commenting, like the "Like" button, but allows you to convey a greater degree of emotion. But I still comment on photos in Path - having real conversations are valuable in most situations.<p>Hard to answer for your particular site without knowing more detail, but why not just use Disqus? They're likely to be better than what you hack together yourself, and most early adopter types are familiar with it which will probably increase your engagement rate.
Whether to have commenting or not depends heavily on your specific site/app, there's no generic answer. Depending on how much user interaction you want/anticipate, you could have like/dislike, rating/stars, or comments.<p>If you <i>would</i> like to have comments, but don't want to waste time on building them, you could use external comment system like Disqus (or even Facebook comments, if it makes sense for your case).
The answer is a firm "it depends", and you haven't given any relevant information to narrow it down beyond that. You haven't even given any useful information to grab on to to start asking questions about.
I think alternatives could exist and be extremely popular, especially since people are crunched for time. On the flip side, sites like HN exist for the insights provided by comments.