Facebook testing out Reply button on comments

Users would be able to have multiple conversation threads within a single post

Remember back in the earliest days of Facebook, when your wall was just one big window and anyone could edit anyone else’s post? Man, that was a terrible system! If someone wanted to be really vindictive, they could go ahead and delete a person’s entire wall. I think that actually did happen to a friend of mine when she broke up with her boyfriend.

Facebook pretty quickly began separating wall posts into individual windows, where only the person who posted could remove their comment and I don’t think posts have changed much since.

Now Facebook is testing out a revamped version, where users can branch comments off into multiple conversation threads, Facebook confirmed to VentureBeat Friday.

The way it would work is like many other online forums: a Reply button will replace the Comment button that is currently featured on each post. Then, each subsequent comment would have its own Reply button to continue that thread. That way, if you want to comment directly to what someone else wrote, and many people have commented since, your comment will be less likely to get lost in the shuffle.

Here is a screencap that was posted onto Twitter of what it will look like, first noticed by Mashable:

“We are testing a new way to add comments to a post on Facebook. With this test you will be able to reply to another comment as well as the original post,” a Facebook spokesperson told VentureBeat. “This is just a small test at this stage.”

The comments threads probably will not make that big of a difference to the average users wall. If I post a status, it will typically get a couple of comments. Rarely do I post something that gets 10 or 20 comments, though it does happen. I see this feature working well on posts put up either by celebrities or brands.

During the recent election, for example, Bill Maher would put up a status that would automatically have hundreds of comments. If I looked at what one person said on the tread, there was no way for me to every talk directly to that person, especially since hundreds of new posts put up while I was writing mine. Now, this would not be a problem.

This is not the only test that Facebook put out this week.

Earlier this week, Facebook began testing out another feature: adding a sound to notify users to when they get a notification.

Someone posted a video to YouTube with the sound:

While there would obviously would not be a way to change the updated comment threads if Facebook decided to go that route, users can at least control if they want the notification sounds or not by going to Account Setting, then Notifications and then unchecking the box that says “Play a sound when each new notification is received.”

Vator reached out to Facebook to confirm the story, and we are still waiting to hear back.

(Image source: https://memegenerator.net)