Prior to social networks like Twitter, Facebook, and FriendFeed, if you wanted to discuss a blog post, you would normally do it in the comments section of the blog post.  Of course, you could discuss on the phone, in person or via email but on the web it would be discussed on that specific blog post.  That still continues but what has changed is that many conversations are taking place around the post as well on these various networks.  For example, someone could read this post in Google Reader, share it causing it to post to Facebook and FriendFeed.  Then on both of those networks, separate conversations could take place that I would never be aware of.  Well, that is changing and today Mashable announced the implementation of social media comments.

The feature is through the blog comment service Disqus and is powered by the comment aggregation service UberVU.  One of the benefits of using Disqus is that it provides a single commenting profile across any blog using the service.  It also allows you to post your comments to Facebook, FriendFeed, and a host of other features.

I have always enjoyed using Disqus on other blogs but have hesitated to implement on this blog or over on Prime Cuts.  The reason for my hesitation was that even though the Disqus comments are integrated into the blog, the comments on my blogs would no longer belong or be in control of the blog…they would be in Disqus hands.  That’s not necessarily a bad thing but, like I said, something that caused hesitation.  However, now I am considering testing with Disqus as I really want to test the social media comments when it enters general release.  It is currently being exclusively tested on Mashable over the next 2 weeks but there are plans to release it.

As of right now, this feature will only be able via the Disqus platform but is where the future of commenting is headed.  We first had the aggregation of social networks into platforms such as FriendFeed and now we will see blog comments become aggregated.

So now I turn it over to you, what are your thoughts on this?  As this eventually becomes a standard feature, what do you think will be the next big step for conversation on blogs and social networks?