ReadWriteWeb

People who use pseudonyms - as opposed to remaining anonymous or using their real identity - are more likely to leave high-quality comments on blogs and other Web sites, according to data released by Disqus.

In addition to leaving more comments, people using pseudonyms are more likely to leave comments that get "likes" from other readers, according to Disqus, which operates blog commenting platforms for about one million Web sites, including ReadWriteWeb.

Social media is supposed to be all about engagement and authenticity, but sometimes it can feel so distributed and overwhelming that conversations get lost. A new web app called Engag.io has tackled this classic problem and offers a pretty good solution that I think you'll want to check out. It's in private alpha right now but we've got an invite code at the bottom of this post. That someone is making an app like this gives me hope that there are still great ideas that can be built on top of the most basic building blocks of the social web.

Engag.io, which gets its name from being the place for your online engagement input and output, is like an inbox for all your conversations on Twitter, Facebook, Google Plus, Foursquare and blog comments. It's an inbox with analytics. It's built by the team behind content curation company Eqentia. Eqentia is ambitious but a little too complicated; Engag.io is very simple and the value of it will be immediately obvious to many people.

Real-time commenting system Disqus came out this morning with a bunch of numbers, including "10 million" (how many dollars it just secured). The battle for commenting solutions on the Web has clearly not died just because Facebook jumped in the ring.

As a matter of fact, Disqus co-founder and CEO Daniel Ha says the company has grown immensely over recent years and he has the numbers to back it up...Facebook comments, be damned.

A study by professors at the Warsaw University of Technology has demonstrated something not surprising to those of us who've spent any time on the Internet. That is, people who comment online are often motivated by emotions, and negative emotions at that. Furthermore, the longer online discussions last, the more likely they are to turn increasingly negative, and in doing so, these negative discussion dissolve into a back-and-forth volley, sustained by fewer and fewer commenters.

Earlier this year, the Sun Chronicle, a small Massachusetts-based newspaper, closed down comments on its website after discussions in the paper's comment section got out of hand. Now, in order to "encourage intelligent and meaningful conversation," all posters on the site will have to register with their full name, address, phone number, email and credit card number. Users will have to verify their identity by using their credit card to pay a one-time fee of $0.99 to activate their accounts. All comments will now include the full name and hometown of the commenter.

A few weeks ago we mentioned an open door of opportunity for startups that could provide a solution to one the Internet's longest enduring problems: comment management. Shortly after that article was published, I received an email from Toma Bedolla, a Denver-based founder of a startup that was looking to provide a unique commenting service to online media outlets. This week I'm travelling in the Denver area for Boulder Startup Week, and Toma tracked me down at a tech meetup last night to tell me about his startup Veracious Entropy and its first experiment, HowTru.

Back when I was in graduate school getting my masters in journalism and mass communication, I worked on various "lab projects" which were challenges faced by media organizations that they wanted to tackle but didn't have the means or the resources to do so. So basically, the students at my school were a think tank for the local media. One of the first issues we were tasked with investigating was finding a new way to allow comments for online news stories to be more efficient and less offensive.

Two former Yale University law students have settled their suit brought against some 30-plus anonymous commenters who posted derogatory remarks about them on an internet forum called AutoAdmit. The comments, which ranged from standard insults to those of a more sexually explicit nature, were so vile they prompted the women to sue in order to out the identities of those doing the commenting. According to the plaintiffs, the suit was necessary because the discussion board, a site designed for law school graduates, was often monitored by firms looking to hire. Because the comments were associated with their names, the women claimed that it would hurt their chances of being offered a job.

Commenting on blogs is - by and large - broken. Designed with the hope of proffering interaction among bloggers and readers, commenting has generally devolved into a series of one-off responses with little actual conversation. Why? It's not designed to facilitate conversations. That's why you see any number of people - Intense Debate and Disqus, most notably - working to provide technology that enhances the conversational dynamic. Now, a new open source project from Jim Jeffers promises to enhance commenting in a way that is both natural and conversational. Meet Encouraged Commentary.