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Disqus Launches New Version of Blog Comment Replacement Application; Stops “Borrowing” Traffic
I’ve written about the three leading comment replacement services (Disqus, JS-Kit and IntenseDebate) a good number of times. Today Disqus is launching the second version of their blog comment replacement service. Disqus launched last October and since then has won over 30,000 content creators who use the service on their blogs and Web sites.
I spoke with Disqus CEO Daniel Ha last weekend to learn more about the second release of the Disqus platform. We began by speaking about my last post about Disqus where I noted that they were taking some of the traffic that should have been directed to the content creator for themselves. On the post Daniel said that the issue would be fixed that day but it wasn’t. However Daniel does say that the v2 release today fixes the issue and traffic should no longer route to Disqus but directly to the content creator.
The major updates in Disqus v2 are a new Wordpress plugin and a new developer API. The Wordpress plugin makes comments SEO friendly - meaning that any comments will have associated Google juice. Similar to what JS-Kit launched last month, all comments will be syndicated back to the original source Wordpress comment system - this allows you to leave Disqus at any time and not lose the associated comment data. There’s a new import process which makes it easy to import and export comments into Disqus. Lastly you can moderate Disqus comments directly from the Wordpress admin - no need to go to the Disqus site. My hope is that a similar plugin will be available for other content platforms soon.
Daniel also walked me through the updated Disqus Web site which now features a page for each member that is public. What this means is that if I signup for a Disqus account, my friends can easily track all of my comments on any Disqus-enabled blog. Daniel calls this a "comment blog". Here’s a sample of my comment blog on Disqus:
One of the interesting bits Daniel noted during our discussion is that he believes that he is a heavier commenter than the CEOs of his competition. He believes they went into the comment replacement business because, "it’s what’s hot".
There’s no doubt that the comment space is hot. From the message board application FriendFeed to all of the new comment replacement and reputation services, this space is one to watch.
Just wondering - API Docs aren’t up yet?
Also, I was randomly selected to test a Captcha? WTF? (Message on top of post, with comment still not posted - “Your comment has been randomly selected to participate in a simple verification process. Please fill in the CAPTCHA below to get your submission accepted. Thank you for participating.”)
API docs have been released to some developers. We’re polishing them up for public consumption. Check back soon. :)
Alan,
Thanks for pointing out that JS-Kit announced these features and more last month. I also want to re-iterate that JS-Kit syncs with Blogger as well as WordPress comments. Since the July 8 announcement, JS-Kit also syncs with Intense Debate and Disqus.
Also, I want to respond to the suggestion at the end of this article that we might be part of those who Daniel thinks have come into the space because it was “hot”. JS-Kit launched in November of 2006 (see http://www.techcrunch.com/2006/11/29/quick-embed-code-to-add-comments-to-any-site/), while Disqus launched in May 2007. So, I assume that Daniel is not referring to us in that comment.
Best,
Nancy at JS-Kit
Hi Yuvi - nice to see you over here :) Yea, we use Mollom for spam prevention and sometimes it decides to throw up a captcha - I apologize and appreciate that you filled it in. If you decide to comment a lot, I can setup an account for you so you never get that message.
I prefer the normal comments - don’t care for any of these comment outsourcing companies.
I think Danny boy’s shot at other companies in the space is in pretty poor taste.
Woh this comments and blog is very embllsihing.
I don’t exactly understand what the benefit of these services are. How is this different from “trackback spam” that I see every once and a while?
Good to see the local comment hosting feature (more secure and better SEO) - I believe there still is an issue with content duplication? SH
i like disqus.
it’s written in Django btw. seen the talk of one of their Developer recently. Shows the true power of the Django Framework.
I prefer the normal comments too.