Starting Aug. 10, Gannett's DesMoinesRegister.com site will begin exclusively using Facebook for comments on its articles and blogs, eliminating the use of anonymous screen names. In a piece by digital editor Julia Thompson, the website announced the move as "an effort to improve online conversation."

"Our 2012 Iowa caucuses site, DesMoinesRegister.com/caucuses, already uses Facebook comments, and we've seen more thoughtful discussion and fewer reports of abusive content there," Thompson wrote. "We expect and hope for a similar result at DesMoinesRegister.com."

The newspaper's website has an FAQ on the move, and the rules of engagement for commenting, at DesMoinesRegister.com/facebookfaq. And Thompson invites readers to share their thoughts or questions at jlthompson@dmreg.com. At the time of this post, the piece had already received 561 comments online.

A January CNET post, "Facebook's next big media move: comments," predicted that "this new technology could see Facebook as the engine behind the comments system on many high-profile blogs and other digital publications very soon." Could this be the beginning of a trend for the media industry?

Read the original DesMoinesRegister.com item here.