Google announced today that it is making Google+ comments available on its Blogger service. Similar to Facebook comments, Google+ allows users to express their thoughts and opinions not only on the relevant post, but on the social network, which obviously extends its social reach to more of Google’s services. So when browsing your blog’s comment thread, you will see the activity from direct visitors as well as what people are saying on Google+.
Your blog readers now have the option to comment publicly or privately in their circles on Google+, and when browsing comments, they can view all of them or just the top comments, or just people in their circles. With this type of control, it not only encourages people to interact with your content, but it can lead to more blog traffic.
While this is only available on Blogger right now, I can see this extending you YouTube, it won’t be long until there is a WordPress extension so you can tie comments between even more sites and Google+. What I would love to see eventually, is the ability to “embed” your community on Google+ within your site. So the communication can happen in either place, a potential replacement for hosting your own forums. For now, if you are on Blogger, visit the Google+ tab on your Blogger dashboard, and check “Use Google+ Comments”. Your older comments will continue to appear in the new widget. To see this feature in action, take a look on the Official Google Blog.