Alex Byers | Digital Technology | Analog World

Since we expanded The Hatchet’s social media presence and redesigned the blogs earlier this year, we’ve seen a fairly marked drop in comments. But we’ve increased our blogging four-fold. So, what gives?

The culprit seems to be a large bump in retweets. No stats for you, but those are clearly way up, and will continue to increase as more of our readers join the Twitterverse. Our new blog design, too, may be pushing readers to tweet rather than comment, as we’ve added the flashy green retweet button, and relegated the comments button to the plain old gray text.

The real question is this: does it matter? Is a bump in retweets a fair trade for a dearth of comments? While its pretty close to a wash, I’d say it’s no problem. Readers have the ability to squeeze in a short comment before the RT in their tweet, and the retweets clearly get our product out to more people – a fundamental goal. And if more people are reading, there is a better chance for a good number of comments anyway.

The problem is that it’s tough to tell how many of our readers have the chance to retweet. Twitter is exploding – especially on campus – but its probably fair to say that a large majority of students and other GW community members don’t have twitter and thus won’t retweet. Of course, everyone can comment – and if we’re lowering the chance they will by featuring the retweet button instead of the comment button, are we shooting ourselves in the foot? Maybe.

Incidentally, I asked this same question in a forum over at Wired Journalists. If you’re a journalist, you should check that site out.