Pseudonyms and Social Profiles

Do you use your real name when you post comments on the Web? According to some recent data released by Disqus, the answer is a resounding no.

Disqus, a platform for online commenting communities, found that the most important contributors online are those using pseudonyms because they tend to contribute the highest quantity and quality of comments. In fact, those using pseudonyms actually account for 61 percent of all comments and commented more frequently - 6.5 times more frequently than anonymous comments and 4.7 times more frequently than commenters using their real names (via Facebook).

Disqus qualified quantity as both the aggregate number of comments and average number of comments by each identity. In relation to quality, the platform broke it down into positive and negative signals. Positive signals were defined as the number of times a comment is liked or replied to, while negative signals were the number of times a comment is flagged, marked as spam or deleted.

There are some legitimate reasons for using a pseudonym, outside of privacy. Namely, should the site being commented on not use nofollow tags, you'll build some relevant links courtesy of the anchor text used with your pseudonym.