Disqus Officially Launches
Yesterday the comment system that I’ve been using since the late summer, Disqus, officially launched. They call it "public beta" but that’s just a way of saying there are still some imperfections in the service. It’s live and anyone can use it.
For those who have been using it on this blog, I have two things to ask of you.
1) please let us (me and disqus) know what you think of the "beta version" that is now running on this blog. please leave me a comment. Daniel is making a run at Jackson for most frequent commenter so he’ll see all of your thoughts.
2) please go into your disqus settings and do a few things:
– put up a picture/icon/avatar. ever since i whacked typepad comments, we’ve lost the myblog log integration which put your photos next to your comments. i miss them.
– in the "notification settings" change the settings so that you can be alerted via email (sms soon) when someone replies to a comment you made. I do that a lot (thanks to disqus’ cool email reply feature) and you might want to know if I replied to a comment you made on this blog.
Hosted third party comment services are here to stay. Andrew has Intense Debate on his blog and I like that service a lot too. The next step is getting all these third party comment systems to interoperate so that having a profile on one of them is like having a profile on all of them.
Comments (Archived):
I like it. Been thinking about incorporating it into my own blog.One feature I’d like to see, is that when logged in, I’d rather not have to type in my name, email and website into the fields below the comment field, before I hit the post button. It would make sense that they are automatically populated if logged in.
That is supposed to happenSomething must be wrong with your disqus setupfred
Fred,Just updated my info.It’s funny that you wrote this post–I was just thinking the other day that your commenting system is about the cleanest and the easiest to use of any of the sites I submit to.
Glad to hear it bruceFred
I like disqus, It’s a big step for the internet. For a long time it has been frustrating to have everyone talking about the same things in different places, there is no linked discussion on topics (except in certain, factioned communities and forums). When people want big space to place their big opinions they do it on their blog, and ask for you to put your comments there, centralizing discussion is a big part of making the internet a social place.
The sign up process was pretty clean, though the picture upload and how to edit needs some explaining/direction.
We’ll make the forum image uploading steps clearer.
Is it really here to stay? Is it really that big of a deal? Will the New York Times, and WSJ (once it’s free) insist on using these service? Will TechCrunch or Apple Insider?Did it make your blog any better? Are more, less or the same number of people commenting now? I must be missing IssacKelly’s point. The only way I access the discussions on these forums is through your blog. Other than cosmetics, I see no difference in the way things work now vs. the way they worked before you were using Disqus. I don’t understand how/why that’s a big step forward for the Internet. What am I missing?
RobertThe answer to your first set of questions is clearly not yet but hopefully somedayThe answer to the second question is “I think it made this blog better” but you’ll know better than meThe answer to the third question is herehttp://disqus.com/profile/#…fred
Thanks Fred. Now that comments seem to display within IE 7 in a stable fashion, it’s at least as good as what you had before. I value comments, but I valued them before. Nested reply threading (like this) is a cool addition although it doesn’t really increase the value that much for me.I don’t go to the hopefully “someday” thinking only because I don’t view the value add as particularly high but I’m old and not easily jazzed by this stuff. If it is increasing commenting (or even just the readership of comments), then it’s certainly of value.I can’t utilize the link you posted above without registering, and that’s the biggest challenge I see for Disqus and others in this space. Will most, or even a significant % of people see the upside to registering?From the looks of this particular post’s commenting, the vast majority of commenters did register. Perhaps peer pressure will get to me over time.
It worked with mybloglogOnce people start seeing friend’s faces on a blog, they tend to want theirs on the blog toofred
You can see your profile without registering by clicking the image next to your name. You can also click “Track Comments” underneath the post box.
I like Disqus and the broader idea of chunking features so that web apps are comprised of best of breed services powered by a number of different providers (ex. use Tumblr with comments powered by Disqus, RSS powered by Feedburner, comment spam powered by Akismet, video powered by YouTube / Vimeo, etc). A few things I’d like Disqus to add…- Better “notification” options, both in terms of format (RSS, integration with Co.mments & CoComment) and content (subscribe to all comments on a post, all comments on a blog, etc)- Tutorials on how to integrate with various blogging tools (ie. how to add Disqus comments to Tumblr for Dummies w/ step by step directions)- Ability to add my real name to my Disqus profile (my login is joelaz, but my name is Joe Lazarus)- Include an option for me to track comments from sites not using Disqus (through a bookmarklet similar to Co.mments / CoComment) so I can track all my conversations in one place.Overall, I really like the service. Now if I can just figure out how to integrate it with Tumblr. ~ Joe
Great suggestions JoeAnd I am totally with you on the “chunking features” commentfred
All of you (mostly) guys live in Geekland. Do you see non-geeks building their own web presence/communication hub the way Fred is doing it – combining multiple services and multiple accounts – with “simple” piecing of scripts, templates, etc…?Normal people cannot even start grasping the incredible mixing of metaphors – space vs. chronology, “visiting” vs. feeds, etc… – that is happening right now on the web.
True but someone is going to stitch it all togetherMaybe facebook already hasFred
I’d generally agree with you…the only exception being MySpace’s ability to teach kids that such a thing as “HTML” exists and changing “HTML code” can make their profiles sexier. And honestly, integrating a lot of these new services isn’t much harder than copy pasting HTML.The bigger question is the need. The more the need for something, the more the users are willing to learn to use your service. Going back to myspace…13 year old girls are all about spicing up their myspace page even if it means pasting some weird set of characters.
I signed up for disqus account, but like Silverbrow, my information is not populated. Also, when I click on the “login to claim identity” link, I get an IE cannot display page error. I think there is some kind of problem with IE 7 because when I tried it in Firefox, it worked great. You might want to do some testing with IE 7.
Sounds like a new quirk. We’ll look now, thanks.
I’ve pushed a fix to the server. Let me know if you still have problems.
I’ll keep an eye on how things go with this and perhaps give it a whirl at my blog. I created an account, but it won’t allow me to login here at your comments.
Could you detail the problem for us? [email protected]
I might have to go and check out this disqus.
Interesting comments. I remember when Fred first asked for feedback on the new commenting system and there were a slew of negative comments. It’s nice to see the general feeling has shifted positively – a strong reflection on the Disqus team.As a big fan of anything that further enables the conversation, I really like Disqus. Looking forward to seeing continued innovation on this important community building front.
Any plan to add the ability to display how many comments each entry has? I know Intense Debate allows this…
We do support this, but it is not currently documented for the general integration instructions. I’ll send you an email in the meantime.
Thanks!
That number is on top above the post box. On the main index, the number is there but the page needs to complete loading before you see this. Meanwhile a placeholder (View) is there.
when you announcing your small investment in this company?
i don’t invest in everything i promote on this blog.fred
Any plans to allow one account to have multiple sites under it for commenting?
If I’m understanding you correctly, we do already support this.You can create as many forums (and subsequently integrate as many comment systems) under a single account as you wish.
Testing 1,2…let’s see if my icon shows up right…
qsdqsd
Is there a way to delete posts?
If you’re a moderator of a forum, you can delete the post from your dashboard or when viewing a comment. Mouse over the avatar for the menu to popup and choose “Remove Post”. On other forums, you may edit your post if it’s within an allotted amount of time.
Type your comment here.
Fred, I owe you. You were the first person that introduced me to Disqus. Like you, I also run typepad and wasn’t happy with the comments system.Ever since I installed Disqus my average number of comments per post has gone way up. And since I can reply by email to comments, I use my BlackBerry to reply to readers who I normally wouldn’t have gotten to.
That’s the killer feature in my bookThanks for this commentMade my dayFred
Totally!Fred, do you think you’d add Disqus to your Tumblr blog too? They now have integration, but I’m wondering if you want your Tumblr to be free of commenting.
Its on there for my avc posts but not for my tumblr, delcious, twitter, and flickr postsFred
Normally, I shy away from anything that asks me to create a username and password but since you asked so nicely I have created an account. It took me a bit to find my way back to the blog and post but I somehow figured it out.By the way, liked your post on The Lead Investor.Question: Does Disquis work on WordPress blogs?Another question: What do the points mean? If I leave great comments and get a bunch of points will I eventually win something?
We support WordPress: http://disqus.com/createIf you created a login from this page, you should have been properly redirected after creating the account. If this is a bug, we’ll fix it.
After I created the account, uploaded the pic, put some info in, I hit save and it stayed on that page. I looked for a button/link that said ‘back to original post’ or something like that but could not find it. I then went back to the blog site by opening a new page in IE 7 and tried to leave a comment but it didn’t recognize me. I hit log in to comment and the screen just refreshed and nothing happened. I then went back to Disquis, logged out, then back to AVC, and then hit log in to comment, logged in, and only then was able to leave a comment. Hope that helps…
It does help, thanks!
I’ve been running Disqus on a few sites. I really like it, it solves a number of problems that I’ve had with comments in the past. Plus it can be easily plugged into any site – doesn’t have to be a blog. I can’t really say enough good things.However, I don’t love the comment form at the top… i think it drops the actual comments below the fold.I also think that when a site runs a ton of javascript (ahem… fred wilson), it makes reading the comments difficult because it doesn’t quite load until all the other javascripts have loaded. That’s not disqus’ fault, though.Anyways, Disqus guys are quite good. I’d pay for this stuff if they weren’t giving it away.
I know I am late to this discussion…way way way late but I found you through Disqus. I just installed it today on my blog and LOVE it. I am still learning so I don’t a wish list or bug catcher yet. But my initial thoughts are that it is wonderful.
That was my initial thought and I still feel that way
very good to hear!