I don’t know any bloggers who don’t crave comments, but there are many more places than blogs that you can leave comments these days: on news articles, photos, videos, comment walls, and more. Comment writing is something of a new art form, and as many people who get comments will tell you, some are great and some are horrible.– Grammar Girl

I’m not sure writing a comment is much different from writing a blog entry or web blurb, but I was still happy to see this. (I didn’t watch the video, though… I’m not really a visual learner.)

In an academic context, I liken a comment to saying in public something that you might raise your hand to say in class, but because I give my students their own individual blogs, when a peer leaves a comment for a peer, it’s a transaction that they know I might never actually see.  I ask students to post 2-4 comments per assigned reading, which I think is enough to keep the conversation going, but the range means that a peer comment is still participating at least somewhat in the gift economy.