Disqus Archive

Blog commenting replacement system Disqus is announcing a partnership today with Seesmic today. Not sure exactly what to call Seesmic these days – it’s partially a video message board and partially a video blog commenting system. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. Adam Ostrow first reported on Disqus adding video comments last week.

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):

We initially reviewed comment replacement system Disqus when it launched last October. Disqus is basically a "smarter" way to handle comments on a blog, microblog or traditional Web site. Intense Debate offers something similar and launched at about the same time but Disqus clearly has the "250" force in effect.

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.

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.

Someone once told me that you will have arrived when your company receives its first lawsuit threat. If that’s true, Disqus has arrived. We wrote about Disqus, a blog commenting system, upon their launch last month. I’m starting to see more and more blogs incorporating the Disqus system which is a good sign for co-founder Daniel Ha.

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. "

Editor’s note: I was provided a 8AM Easstern embargo but other sites have already posted earlier (TechCrunch) so I will post as well.

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 don’t think I have gone 24 hours in the past month without hearing something about content ratings, comment ratings, widgets for content based on ratings, comment optimization and general forum tools. We have written about Outbrain who takes ratings and personalizes content based on them, JS-Kit who takes ratings and creates widgets to help find new content on a site and today Disqus launches. Each of these services provide some functionality that is the same and each has their own spin.

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.