Disqus Goes Beta II – Gets More Funding And Removes Message Boards

Editor’s note: Embargo was set for 10am PT but broken so we will go ahead and post now.

Announced today, blog comment add-on Disqus (our coverage) has moved into Beta II of their app and also raised a new round of funding. Disqus currently powers over 4,000 blogs across all categories and segments. I am very impressed with their efforts to-date especially considering the product was in a first beta.

When I initially reviewed Disqus, one of my frustrations was with their message boards. Basically any site that used Disqus automatically created a message board that included all of the comments. In conversations with a variety of people, the responses were always the same. No one could understand the benefit of this functionality. With the new beta, the message boards are gone and replaced with "community pages". The community pages let you view the comments associated with a blog in a community style.  There are also a variety of smaller updates which you can read about on the Disqus blog.

The company has also raised another $500,000 in funding from Union Square Ventures in NYC and from angels including Howard Lindzon.

At the end of the day, the key for all of the new commenting, rating and comment tracking services is to do two things. One is to drive visitors deeper inside the blog or Web site and the other one is to improve the user experience over the standard comment system that ships with the blog or CMS. The next question for all of the new crop of services is how they will monetize themselves.