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Disqus Lets You Profit From Comments on Other Blogs and Grabs Some SEO For Themselves
Have you ever been stuck wondering what to post on your blog? Can’t seem to find a topic that suits the current situation? Well a new feature called "Reblogging" launched today by comment replacement service Disqus could help quench your thirst for a great post!
The Disqus reblogging feature allows you to easily click a button on any comment left on a blog using the Disqus service and post it as a full post on your blog. You can basically lift a comment from X blog and place it on your blog! So when you are stuck for a topic, just go to a popular blog that receives a lot of comments, click "Reblog" and bam… instant post.
While the concept of Reblogging works on a service like Tumblr, I just don’t see it as a value-add here. Who benefits from the Reblog process?
- The blog publishing the comment gets a juicy bit of content (that’s not in a script code)
- The source blog receives a seo-rich link back to the source – this is a great way to up inbound counts
- Disqus benefits as a seo-rich link back to Disqus travels with the Reblogged content
- Disqus also adds a link back to the commenter’s profile on Disqus
- The original commenter who spent time formulating the comment gets nothing
Just like I called out Disqus for "borrowing" traffic earlier this year, I am again calling them out (and understand I like Daniel and think he is a very bright guy!). Add a link back to the comment author’s blog instead of his/her Disqus profile. Then the service becomes more of a value to everyone and might be more beneficial to the community at large. I’d also wonder if Disqus users need to opt-in to this program – when I comment on X blog, do I automatically grant any blog or source with the ability to lift my comment and do as they please? What happens to context – it could easily be meaningless outside of the source discussion. We already see this happening when Disqus comments are posted on FriendFeed – the context is completely missing. This Reblogging feature could lead to some great discussions around comment portability and usage. Maybe we need a licensing model for comments.
In a perfect situation, the only links that would be listed are to the source blog where the comment was posted and a link to the commenter’s blog.
This new Disqus Reblog feature currently works on the Wordpress, Movable Type, TypePad, and Tumblr platforms.
Here’s Disqus founder Daniel Ha’s screencast of how the reblog process works. I hope there’s an opt-out button – I have no desire to participate with regards to this new feature.
i wasn’t anticipating such a negative reaction to this feature, which i have been asking for since day one.
i regularly get great comments on my blog and want to be able to elevate them to the front page easily. this does that for me.
i also sometimes leave comments on other blogs that are full blown blog posts and i’ve wanted a way to showcase them on my blog while recognizing the blog they came from. this does that as well.
it’s a great feature in my opinion.
Fred
Too often the conversation goes ignored, along with all the interesting and insightful content it contains. That’s why people have been taking the discussion elsewhere — to places (like Twitter and FriendFeed) where it receives attention, where it can be discovered and followed.
Bloggers should be happy that Disqus is offering a reblog feature — that way they can keep their readers engaged on their own property (for those who care about that sort of thing)
I agree that it’s a great feature and that this post seems overly negative, but I also agree with Allen that the attribution link should point to the commenter’s site, not their Disqus profile. The person who left a good comment should be rewarded with a link to their site. It’s also better for the reader, who is likely clicking on the commenter’s name to learn more about them from their site, not to see a bunch of their Disqus comments out of context. It’s a great feature that will be even better with appropriate attribution.
The reblogged comment links back to the original site. And the feature just simplifies something that was always possible before. Chill.
I think the author’s name should link back to the url they commented with as well. It looks like right now it links to their Disqus profile. By commenting with the url of their blog the author is attributing their thoughts back to that property.
At the same time the Disqus profile is a place for all the comments I’m making on Disqus enabled blogs to be discovered in one place (which is nice if I don’t have a blog). Maybe this should be an option as part of the reblogging process. I’ve seen others ask for this and imagine it would be a simple change for disqus.
I’m wondering how quickly I could automate that for ease of splogging… does Disqus have trackbacks? Because that could go completely un-noticed and actually bite them right where the sun don’t shine for SEO. GENIUS!
I like this feature.
Establishing context is a big challenge for anyone trying to work with comments. When using Disqus’ reblogging system, I think it is up to the responsible blogger to give his/her readers that context. In any case, I find that an interesting comment on it’s own is alone enough to get me to visit the original post, read it, and participate in the conversation.
This is a great feature. Disqus is taking comments to the next level and this is just one more example of that innovation.
Once you post something on the web it is public domain, so anyone can lift it regardless of this feature. So even though this comment is not on Disqus if someone wants to lift it and post it somewhere they can do it and there is nothing that I can do to stop them.
Go Disqus!
Thanks for that clarification – sure clears up most things for me.
I’m sorry; what? Did copyright law get rewritten overnight and no one told me? I had no IDEA that everything is now public domain. I’ll be sure to let the New York Times know that I can now just repost their content as my own. Good to know!
Large sites like ABC (the example in the slideshare demo) are going to try and kill this. The question is whether Disqus can get big enough fast enough that they bring more traffic than they take.
I’ve only just signed on with Disqus. I like having a centralized list of comments I’ve made – and the reblogging feature seems interesting. This said, I do see your point in terms of passing back credit to the original content contributor, as it seems only fair to do so.
The flaws that Risely point out are just personal concerns if anything. Disqus saved my comments when my domain went down and it just so happened that I didn’t have a backup of anything.
I love it though. It’s efficient and has significantly decreased the amount of spam comments I see now. If anything, the only spam I receive are from entries that I chose not to have Disqus included on.