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My verdict on Disqus: Two thumbs up

Started by mathewi · 5 months ago

There seems to be a mini-bitchmeme brewing, sparked by VC blogger Fred Wilson’s recent post about Disqus, which is the commenting system that I use on this blog and many others use as well. Why Fred decided to write about Disqus at this point I don’t know — ma ... Continue reading »

36 comments

  • fredwilson

    5 months ago

    matthew

    you wonder why i chose now to write this post. it's a good question.

    i'd noticed a lot of chatter in twitter lately about why to use disqus, most notably robert scoble and others who were talking to him about it.

    i was going to twitter the three reasons right then and there

    but then i thought better of it. i really needed a bit more than 140 characters to do justice to the reasons.

    so that's it. it seems to have spawned a great discussion and debate. which is wonderful. and a bunch of feature requests for disqus and its competitors too.

    fred
    reply
  • mathewi

    5 months ago

    Thanks for the comment, Fred. I'm glad you did write about it -- like
    you, I think a healthy comment section is the mark of a good blog, so
    it's worth thinking about how to make it better. And for me, Disqus
    definitely does that.
    reply
  • Louis Gray

    5 months ago

    Adding Disqus is one of the very best things I've done for my blog, period.
    reply
  • mathewi

    5 months ago

    I would have to agree that it's right up there for me as well, Louis.
    reply
  • Corvida

    5 months ago

    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.
    reply
  • MG Siegler

    5 months ago

    We just installed it on VB, had a few hiccups, but should be running smoothly now. Daniel and the team are great and helping out with issues.

    I think I'm gonna put it on PL eventually too, if I ever get a free second.
    reply
  • howardlindzon

    5 months ago

    i didnt know disqus worked in socialist canada :)
    reply
  • mathewi

    5 months ago

    Well, once I had it checked out by the appropriate government
    departments and agencies, it seemed to work fine :-)
    reply
  • howardlindzon

    5 months ago

    :) toucheeee
    reply
  • BlueCockatoo

    5 months ago

    I just signed up and like Disqus so far, but I will be much happier when they get import/export working. I do like the idea of being able to track my own conversations anywhere so that I can see if there were any replies without having to manually follow up on it. That and comment spam reduction are the most attractive features to me.
    reply
  • John McCrea

    5 months ago

    Let me add two more thumbs up for Disqus. And if you use Disqus, you can have comments on your blog that happen inside Plaxo Pulse also go back to your blog. Way cool.
    reply
  • defcon

    5 months ago

    sorry to say, but intensedebate is better, i have used disqus a long time and searched and found the better alternative
    reply
  • Des

    5 months ago

    What about intensedebate?
    -Des
    http://techwatch.reviewk.com/
    reply
  • Scabr

    5 months ago

    Comment is a complete informational object.Like post , photo,video,etc.Disqus picks out it well.It's main strategic advantage.Technically needed to improve.
    reply
  • Mark Evans

    5 months ago

    I'm a big Disqus fan as well. Aside from the feature-set, Daniel's willingness to listen to users and quickly respond gives me confidence Disqus is heading in the right direction. For anyone interested, here's an interview I did recently with Daniel:
    http://snurl.com/28bse
    reply
  • dave

    5 months ago

    I use Disqus too, and I like it. A lot.

    I'd suggest looking in the Spam section of the Dashboard every once in a while. The first time I did I found a slew of false-positives, posts it had categorized as spam which weren't spam.

    I don't miss trackbacks, and I guess I'd like to keep a copy of the comment data, though if they ever went down I can't imagine when I'd find the time to import them into something else. And why would that be more likely to survive? I don't see why we should blame Disqus for a lingering problem none of us have really addressed, the future-safeness of our work.
    reply
  • mathewi

    5 months ago

    That's a good point, Dave. In fact, Corvida from SheGeeks wrote about
    how Disqus saved her when her blog host went down -- so that was a
    situation where having comments hosted elsewhere was actually a
    benefit.
    reply
  • felix

    5 months ago

    I think the difference is that if you own your comments (as well as your software stack) you are in control of your backups. That you may not back up your comments is completely within your control, Disqus is completely outside of your control. If they decide to shut down tomorrow, there's not much that could be done to salvage your comments unless they provide a way.

    Having said that, I just rolled it out on my blogs, so I guess we'll see! :)
    reply
  • svartling

    5 months ago

    Same here. I've started to install it on all my blogs :)
    reply
  • James McNally

    5 months ago

    I'm liking it but just waiting for all my commenters to sign up, too. You're one of the only blogs I comment on that uses it so far...
    reply
  • mndoci

    5 months ago

    I have the same concerns as Risely, but in the end the benefits and ability to add karma, etc won out. Tighter integration into WP, and most importantly trackbacks would be most useful, but I figured those would happen over time. Reasons I don't use intense debate (which looks prettier). It's less stable, and the community around Disqus seems more mature
    reply
  • Sachin Sawant

    5 months ago

    hey, disqus is good.........i guess it will become really big..... Ha is doing heck of a job........
    reply
  • Cynthia Blue

    5 months ago

    Okay but if I reply to one of my commenters comments, will they get an email of my reply? I commented logged out in another browser and then replied, and didn't get notification of the reply.
    reply
  • mathewi

    5 months ago

    As far as I know, Cynthia, commenters get notified by Disqus when
    there's a reply -- or should.
    reply
  • Daniel Ha

    5 months ago

    They do. Let us know if you're having probs!
    reply
  • jeffisageek

    5 months ago

    I guess to me if I would lose my comments on my blog it wouldnt be like I get fired at work or have to get a divorce...they are just comments and not the end of the world...but that is just on my blog so I went with disqus.

    I really like the service and the community around it.
    reply
  • none

    4 months ago

    honestly how many hours (yes hours) would this take to build. wtf? why doesnt someone open source one for wordpress?
    reply
  • brlewis

    4 months ago

    Go for it. You'll be famous!
    reply
  • Jack

    4 months ago

    Matthew,

    You might want to take a look at this: http://ryanspoon.com/blog/2008/05/15/disqus-aft...
    reply
  • mathewi

    4 months ago

    Thanks, Jack -- those are all good points, although I'm not convinced
    how much SEO value there is to Google being able to search comments
    (and I believe you can implement Disqus without using Javascript). But
    I agree that direct access to email info and the ability to have
    trackbacks are both useful things, and I hope Disqus adds them soon.
    reply
  • Brendan Falkowski

    4 months ago

    A rebel-news site for my university implemented Disqus, and I wrote an article for them opposing it. Disqus has a baseline usability problem, which I outline here: http://www.istbuilding.com/2008/05/18/a-blog-is...
    reply
  • mathewi

    4 months ago

    Brendan, I'm not sure I agree with you that Disqus has a "baseline
    usability problem"; I prefer threaded conversations, for one thing
    (although many disagree). As for the need to register, while it does
    turn some people off it also makes it more likely that the person
    commenting really wants to contribute -- and thereby keeps the number
    of malicious comments to a minimum. There are benefits and drawbacks
    to both approaches, obviously.
    reply
  • anon

    4 months ago

    is an email address necessary for every comment?
    I don't like asking my users for email addresses, it's orwellian.
    reply
  • Michael Midnight

    4 months ago

    Nice right up
    reply
  • dj paine

    3 months ago

    disqus is the best.
    reply
  • MichelleMMM

    3 months ago

    Where can I find a list of tech blogs that use Disqus?
    reply

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