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.

The updated IntenseDebate Wordpress plugin features a better admin control panel along with full data synchronization. This means that comments entered in IntenseDebate will also be sent to the core Wordpress install. This means that you can test IntenseDebate without the fear of losing comments should you decide to leave at a later point.

They have also updated the main IntenseDebate site with a "Swedish" look and feel they say. And there’s also updated Akismet spam protection. 

Check out our interview with IntenseDebate co-founder Jon Fox and our technical interview with developer Austin Hallock on our sister site HTMLCenter.

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.

The acquisition is an IP-only acquisition and JS-Kit bought the distribution and customer base. They are currently swapping out the widgets in place that are branded HaloScan to use the JS-Kit widget and it should be transparent to the blog owners. They are 20% done with the swap so far and currently are replicating all comment data into both systems to make certain that nothing is lost. The new JS-Kit is adding sites at 300/day and will have over 8 million users.

The only question I have is why they didn’t push JS-Kit functionality into HaloScan and kept the HaloScan name. I’ve never been a fan of the JS-Kit name, it’s no longer just a javascript kit of tools.

As for the new features, they include a portable comment profile, comment synchronization and search engine accessibility. The portable comment profile screenshot is listed below. Loux noted that unlike Disqus, JS-Kit isn’t redirecting users back to their site – everything goes back to the content creator.

The synchronization feature which is called "sync" is game changing I believe for comment replacement systems. If you’ve read my previous posts around this technology, one of my concerns is what happens if the company goes out of business. Your site’s comments are gone forever as well. JS-Kit believes they have the answer using Sync. What Sync does is pull in comments from your current platform and then back updates live to the blog software you use. So let’s assume you put JS-Kit on your blog, tomorrow a person makes a commment. That comment is sent behind the scenes back to your blog commenting system along with the JS-Kit powered comment. This means that you can turn off JS-Kit anytime and still maintain your complete comment base. Sync currently works with Wordpress and Blogger blogs and Loux says more platforms are coming.

The other update is that now there’s SEO (search engine optimization) support for your comment data – everything will be indexed properly.

Loux concluded by saying that they don’t compete on lock-in like the other comment replacement services do. He believes they must keep innovating to keep your business.

Disqus

One thing I noticed is that Disqus allows you to subscribe so that you receive email notifications when someone replies to your comment. I always love this for two reasons. For the commenter, it helps them to know when someone has replied so they can reply if needed. For the blog, it helps to get users to come back to the site where they might not have otherwise. When the user comes back to comment, they might also interact with new content. It’s a win-win. Except in the case of Disqus.

Disqus hacks the URL of the blog entry and instead of pointing the user back to the originating source (i.e. VentureBeat, etc.), it sends the user to a page on Disqus. There’s no reason for this and in fact, should Disqus obtain mainstream acceptance, could pose a number of usability issues. The user receives an email from the source but then is sent to some page on another site. Will the average Internet user understand what’s going on when they click the link and end up somewhere else in cyberspace?

Disqus should be transparent to the user. Disqus co-founder Daniel Ha agreed with me that the URL should point back to the source a month ago. My hope is that this post will move the change up in the development cycle.

Here’s a screenshot of an email message I received when commenting on Louis Gray’s blog. Note the URL for me to view the comments.

This deal helps Seesmic more than Disqus. Both companies are currently valley darlings but Disqus seems to have started the slow crawl to mainstream adoption. Seesmic is still in the "figuring out who I am" stage — which is ok for a new company like Seesmic is. I would have held off on this partnership a few months until Seesmic gains a bit more traction and user adoption. Also, video blog commenting seems about 18 months ahead of its time.

Disqus currently self-reports 13,000 sites actively using their blog comment replacement and Seesmic reports over 300 sites using the video commenting plugin. Check out my commentary on Disqus where I do a deep dive into the pros and cons of using their blog commenting replacement service.

What’s interesting is that Seesmic investor Techcrunch launched the video commenting system a couple of weeks ago and so far it’s been barely used. And when users have posted videos, most nearly all of them have me wanting my time back. A video comment must have emotion and offer something text can’t. Otherwise just post the text and let me read and/or scan and move on. Just because you have a webcam, doesn’t mean you should create video comments instead of text comments.

Here’s an (extreme) example of a comment that just wasted 30 seconds of my time (this is from the "Wired" post on TC this morning):

Disqus investor Fred Wilson posted an informercial for why he believes Disqus is superior to the commenting systems that blog platforms offer by default. He noted three major benefits for Disqus over the normal commenting systems:

1. threaded discussions
2. email replies/email replies for commenters
3. shared profiles

I assume these are his three top reasons for using Disqus. Let’s take a look at his reasons with regards to what we use here on CenterNetworks which runs a basic out-of-the-box drupal setup.

• threaded discussions – we have that, you can click reply on any comment and it will produce a threaded discussion
• email replies – we have this as well, just check the box and anytime a person replies to your comment, you will receive an email notification straight away. Disqus also allows you to email a reply and it will be added to the comment thread. This is pefect for a personal blog – not crazy about it for a business blog (one that earns revenue).
• shared profiles – openID anyone? Drupal also supports central logins so all Drupal blogs can use the same login.

Canadian blogger Mathew Ingram throws Disqus two-thumbs up and says that the email function is his favorite. He also notes spam prevention as a major factor in his decision. I would have assumed that Fred would have the same in his top 3 reasons. Comment spam freaking sucks. We are using Mollom on CN and as I’ve written before, it’s given me back an hour a day.

Disqus offers distributed moderation which means that you can select anyone who uses Disqus to help moderate your blog comments. I like this feature, especially for popular blogs/Web sites.

In Fred’s infomercial, he forgets to note some of the things you will be giving up when you move to Disqus. Let’s take a look:

• Comments are no longer attached to your blog. If Disqus goes down or out of business, you are borked. (fyi, I don’t expect them to go under). There’s also no data portability currently so you can’t take your comments with you. I asked Daniel about this last October and he said it was coming – I assume it’s still coming.
• A privacy policy must now include the Disqus privacy policy. Will the average commenter understand that when they comment on Mathew Ingram’s blog, that they are agreeing to the terms of service from Disqus? Disqus founder Daniel Ha says that they will never sell or rent the email addresses, and I completely believe him today – but what about for data collection purposes later on? Clearly Disqus is sitting on a gold mine of data.
• Comments are not indexed by the search engines – the code Disqus requires prevents Google from indexing the comments on your blog as part of the article.
• Users never need to come back to your blog to be part of the discussion – this is a personal preference in my opinion. Personal bloggers and those not "earning a living" at blogging won’t care about this while those that do earn a living will. Maybe not today, but eventually they will.
• Where’s the business plan for Disqus? Eventually they will need to generate revenue, right? My guess is that there will be some freemium model with ads/pay for premium services. Or they will take all of the comments and bundle them and sell them as aggregated research.

Conclusion

Disqus has moved the idea of commenting forward which is a good thing. Is the service perfect? No. Is the service the right one for some bloggers? Absolutely. I’ve enjoyed speaking with Daniel who is a very bright guy and I think he will continue to enhance the Disqus offering over time.

The conversation about where the conversation should take place is only beginning.

At the end of the day, the decision to use Disqus (or any of the other new comment replacements) is a personal preference. In my opinion, the decision rests on whether the blog is commercial or not. I still haven’t seen enough reasons to switch the commenting system on CN (or any of my other sites) to Disqus.

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.

This evening Daniel has a post explaining their first lawsuit threat. I am assuming that Disqus only acts as a content repository and that the content within your repository is your own and Disqus claims no responsibility. He calls upon Title 47, Section 230 of the U.S. Code with respect to the complaint.

The complaint includes:

I am the President of a big European company. I will put unlimited funds in trying to get this profile down. You can chose to work with me or face the consequences in a court of Law both in Europe and in the US. I am very sorry that you have declined my request to remove the slander statements about me on your website. I strongly urge you to study the slander and defamation laws in both U.K, Sweden and United States. You might also want to talk to your lawyers about a libel cases especially in the US.

Legal Actions will be taken against you and your company both in Europe and The United States on Wednesday. We will ask for a jury trial.

The part I am not sure about is what procedures does Disqus have in place to deal with these types of complaints. How do they notify the site owner, etc.  If they don’t already have these policies, it’s probably time to create them and post them publicly.

On a funny note, could you just imagine the cast of characters at a Web 2.0 trial? Your honor I’d like to call Robert Scoble. In walks Scoble with a whiteboard to draw the events while people are chatting on Kyte. Next up is Justine who allows her viewers to watch the courtroom through her eyes and every 30 seconds we get an Xtrain commercial. Last up is Jason Calacanis who explains that he likes that the courts still use humans to decide one’s fate and not some algorithym because humans do things better. On breaks, everyone pulls out their iPhone and Twitters the past period’s events.

Daniel ends the explanation with, "we’re not too concerned, but I wanted to take this opportunity to clarify: Disqus makes no claim on your comment content and we take great care to make sure we don’t overstep any bounds. "

Yesterday we wrote about Disqus launching their comments tool and today we have another, SezWho. For a demo of how SezWho works, check out my friends at ReadWriteWeb and VentureBeat – both sites have the SezWho comment tool embedded. If you check out my title, I note that SezWho might be the best of the pack of comment tools. Why? Continue reading…

SezWho builds up distributed ratings and reputation which in simple terms means that your comment here on CN can add value to your comments on RWW, etc. In speaking with SezWho CEO Jitendra Gupta he said that the idea is to "carry your reputation with you" and can help CN leverage whether you should be allowed to comment directly or require validation, etc. The team has filed several patents around their technology.

They aren’t building a destination site but rather a distributor site – meaning that they want bloggers to use the tool. They offer a free version and soon a premium version with more features and access. The team recently closed a $1 million Series A round of financing.

Here is an example from VentureBeat:

The new features they are rolling out today include:

Stats for commenters Verification system so no one can "fake" your account "Red Carpet" which shows the top rated commenters on a site A badge to show your score within the SezWho network – Jitendra suggested that site owners might use the badge to show how they work with the community

Back to why I think it’s the top of the crop. First, comments remain on your site and aren’t touched in any way. Search engine optimization remains, no issues with "what if this startup goes under" and it keeps everything nice and tidy. Also, the widget is placed on top of the comments and adds value to both the reader and the site owner. I could see a great mashup of Outbrain’s personalized ratings plus SezWho’s technology on the comment side to create a powerful force in comment ratings.

Some have asked me when or if I will install any of these tools (JS-Kit, SezWho, Outbrain, Disqus, etc.) and the answer is that I am still working on a strategy around this area. Our relationship is most important to me so whatever I add has to add value for you and has to make sense from a technology standpoint.

I had the chance to speak with Disqus co-founder Daniel Ha. Disqus comes out of the Y Combinator startup incubator and the team is based in Silicon Valley. The team is two people including Daniel and they aren’t speaking about funding ouside of the Y Combinator investment.

Disqus’ main functionality is centered around comments and creating forum threads from those comments. Their tagline is "powering better discussion" and they are centered around the discussion not the blog itself. You can check out a working version on Fred Wilson’s blog.

Disqus is creating visibility for content outside the site itself by creating forums on their destination site that drive visitors back to the blogs that generate the content. When a user comments on a Disqus-enabled blog, that comment can be rated and those ratings drive the user’s overall score. Also, the comment feeds back to that user’s Disqus profile page which Hu calls a "microblogging page" which will house all of a user’s comments across all Disqus-enabled blogs.

One of the things I like about what they offer is the spam protection. If you switch to their comment system, they have two spam filters which protect bad comments from appearing. My concern with Disqus (as with the other systems as well) is being able to take the data with you and what it takes to re-import it back into your blog should you desire to terminate the relationship. Frankly on Drupal (which powers CN) I believe it would be a difficult task. So if you decide to move to one of these offsite comment systems, make sure you consider this piece before making your decision.

Integration is offered for Wordpress, Typepad, Blogger, MoveableType and an API for any other platform. I have embedded an example below.