Disqussing Disqus

Yesterday our portfolio company Disqus announced a bunch of numbers including the fact that they had raised $10mm to fund their rapid growth. The AVC community is powered by Disqus and we are big fans of the company here. So I'm pretty sure many of you already saw the news and are happy for the Company. For those that did not see the news, click on that link above. For those who would rather get a brief summary, here's what they announced:

– Disqus is four years old this week

– Disqus communities are viewed each month by almost 500mm users worldwide.

– Over 750,000 blog communities have adopted Disqus

– 35mm commenters actively participate in these communities

– The company grew 5x across all its core metrics in the past year

– 75% of blogs that use a third party comment system use Disqus

– All of this was achieved by just 16 people, but they hope to increase that number in the coming months

If you are interested in working for a rapidly growing category leader, here is their jobs page.

In other news, Disqus released some new features, one of which I discovered in the comments to yesterday's post. If you mention other people in a Disqus comment by typing @ then his or her Disqus name, mentioned people will be notified via email or Twitter. I saw a number of people using this yesterday. Let's do this as much as we can around here. It will make the disqussions even more lively.



#Web/Tech#Weblogs

Comments (Archived):

  1. Luke Toland

    Right now, there’s essentially three comment options: Disqus, Facebook or a niche/in-house solution. Disqus understands comments. It is supremely simple to implement, uncanny in its intuitiveness and sports a set of seamless features, most of which can be had for free.Then Facebook decides to release its own system that offers nothing more the ability to see Likes in your notification feed. The easy login that Facebook comments affords has been a staple of the Disqus system for the longest time.Is it any wonder then that Disqus grows in leaps and bounds.

    1. Peter Sullivan

      Isn’t there also Intense Debate or something like that?

      1. Peter Iliev

        Yes, and LiveFyre

        1. ShanaC

          and echo/js-kit. I’m finding it hard to get people to move once they are on js-kit

  2. Dave W Baldwin

    Just a matter of doubling the 500mm and then the next doubling….

  3. CliffElam

    I think Disqus rocks.Not clear what their business model is. Having run volunteer (my son the tech genius!) support for my parents blogs (one of which was getting 2K+ uniques/day) and some high traffic business blogs (10K uniques/day) I would certainly have paid for better commenting.But I’ve also learned that I am not a good milepost for stuff like that. My parents blog – there is no way they would have paid (or been reachable). So maybe it’s just me not getting it.-XC

    1. fredwilson

      daniel addresses that in the post I linked tothey have a premium/paid service called VIP that large publishers pay forand they have a “pro” offering that large blogs/blog networks pay forand they are going to be rolling out audience side revenue offerings later this year

      1. CliffElam

        I get the freemium/premium and huge audience paradigm. You’d have to be the geico guy under the rock not to.What I was pointing out was that blogger set an acceptable but not great low free bar and while I would have been a great target, how many people really have the traffic requirements?How about they roll out something for mobile first? I would pay to not have to type into a website on my iPhone!

      2. Shyam Subramanyan

        Would be interesting to see the audience side offering.By its nature, comments are difficult to mine for intent and separation of signal from noise. There’s a high level interest graph based on sites that I comment on, but that does not translate to intent.I am assuming Disqus will have some kind of revenue share with the bloggers/publishers, especially those that don’t buy the pro or premium products.

    2. Peter Sullivan

      From what I can remember, on This Week in Startups Daniel hinted that the VIP pricing was working but wasn’t producing the streams they wanted directly. And that they would be focusing on other revenue producing mechanism, mostly ad based I guess.

  4. Avid Avini

    What is the future of Disqus? Isn’t Facebook Comments making Disqus obsolete in the near future?

    1. fredwilson

      how so?facebook comments has been around for two years. in that period disqus has grown over 1000%. in the three months since the latest version of Facebook comments came out, Disqus has grown faster than ever. publishers are adopting Disqus much more often than FB commentsFB copied Twitter’s status updates and yet Twitter is not obsoleteFB copied Foursquare’s checkins and yet Foursquare is not obsoleteFB copied Qoura and Stack’s Q&A and yet Quora and Stack are not obsoleteFB copied Groupon and Living Social’s daily deals and yet Groupon and Living Social are not obsoletemaybe you need to rethink your analysis of the way the internet works

      1. Avid Avini

        “maybe you need to rethink your analysis of the way the internet works”Isn’t that a little too personal for an answer to an open question?I believe your comparison with Twitter, FB, Quora, Stack Overflow and Groupon/Living Social is not entirely correct.I hope that we agree, that FB Comments and Disqus serve exactly the same usecase. Otherwise the discussion doesn’t make sense.Facebook’s and Twitter’s usecases differ widely. I guess, thats undisputable.I don’t see where FB copied Quora or Stack Exchange. And Questions is not comparable to Quora or SE.Facebook hasn’t even started to roll out their Offers product. And sure, I agree, that Groupon will not be obsolete but if Facebook rolls out their Offers product internationally, then Groupon will have to look for new or extended markets in the Online Deal Biz.The FB – Foursquare connection keeps on fascinating me. 4sq is not really popular anywhere outside the US. Still it manages to get media buzz and close some big deals. At the same time Facebook hardly puts any focus on their Places/Local Deals/CheckIn product.However, my question was: “What is the future of Disqus?” By that, I meant, do they have any different current usecases or future strategies thank being a commenting tool for publishers.

        1. fredwilson

          They don’t serve the same use case at all. FB requires that users commentwith their FB identity and post their comment to their FB network. FBcomments don’t synch with the CMS’ native comment system so you arebasically outsourcing your comments and community to FBI would never do that nor would most community hosts

          1. Avid Avini

            Thanks for anwering, @fredwilson:disqus !What do you mean with syncing with the CMS’ native comment system? Why are comments outsourced? Aren’t they only visible on the publisher’s site and optionally visible on FB?

          2. Peter Sullivan

            I think he means that the comments are basically delivered through Facebooks social plugin which is essentially an iframe. I think with Disqus the content providers have more access to the commenting data. Its essentially still “theirs” whereas Facebook owns the right to the comments.

          3. markslater

            firstly – FS is very big internationally. I think @dens:disqus put some numbers out on their international growth recently.secondly – what makes you think FB deals is going to be a success?

        2. sbmiller5

          I would argue they have very different use cases. Almost all of my commenting around the web is related to my professional life. I do not want Facebook involved with my professional life.I also don’t want to spam my friends and family with my professional life comments by posting it in my Facebook feed.Ultimately, I no longer comment on Techcrunch because my log-in options are Facebook (see above), yahoo (i might have an old Fantasy Football log-in, and AOL, Hotmail (I might have a log-in from ten years ago floating around). Which is too bad, because when Techcrunch was using Disqus they were creating valuable commenting streams.

      2. Peter Sullivan

        I think the one big thing Facebook going for it is the tie into your news feed to collect comments outside the content providers website.The beauty about Disqus is focused product development company wide on solving one particular problem and solving it as best as possible.I am rather new to using a Disqus account (I would always just log in as guest) but what I do love is the ability to see my history. Thats sweet.

      3. markslater

        this is very true fredthe paradox that faces every successful company is to be able to “shed the skin” of what you became successful at – and adopt an entirely new function.we know facebook for friending – we dont implicitely know it for commenting or deals.we know foursquare for check ins – we dont know it for…lets say deals.its very hard for a company to get someone to change how they look at it functionally speaking.the successful ones manage to weave a business model in to this function in a frictionless way – almost an unintended consequence. (think ad words on search). Twitter might have a shot at something like this.

        1. awaldstein

          Agree…Each of these social platforms gave expression to a behavior that inherited and defined it. You either find a biz model that is natural to that or you have the delicate and difficult shift of channeling the behaviors in a new direction.

          1. markslater

            much better description of what i was trying to say!its a very tough challenge for some of these companies that gained monster user traction and are trying to pivot in to a business model.reminds me of the “eyeballs” valuation method of the late 90’s in some ways.

        2. Fernando Gutierrez

          Also, most of us use each social network in a different way. I have some friends in Facebook whom I’d not accept in Foursquare. And some in Linkedin or Twitter that I don’t want in Facebook or Foursquare. And in each place I post different things that can be interesting in that context and for that people.No social network can be everything for everyone like FB is trying. In theory you could configure different groups with different permits and so… but the truth is that it’s much better to have the best in every scenario.

          1. ShanaC

            Do you think we cycle through general social networks down to the specific ones.

          2. Fernando Gutierrez

            Not sure… some of the specific ones were there before or at the same timethan the general ones (Flickr vs FB photos, Last.fm vs MySpace?), so maybeit’s not chronological for everyone. But for some people I do believe thatFB has been the first contact with participative internet and after it theyare ready for new things (or will be).

      4. Brad

        I am sitting in China reading conversation with Disqus, but can not log on to my Facebook or Twitter accounts. I have also noticed fewer and fewer people using their facebook accounts in my network except bored moms.Just like we ride our bikes with a purpose, we also have a car, utilize public transit, jump on a plane and amazingly even use boats and motorcycles sometimes. I do not buy in to the facebook strategy of a one size fits all approach.

      5. Shyam Somanadh

        The ‘killer’ phenomenon is a sad byproduct of breathless reporting by publications that cover the start-up scene.Almost every healthy product domain can sustain 1-3 big players in it, often at a profitable level. Social, location, conversations are three such distinct domains.Congratulations to the team. It is an exceptionally well executed product.

      6. Eric Leebow

        Very true, and they completely copied other social networks that came before them…

    2. DarkUFO

      The more people who get to use Disqus, the better the blogsphere will be. I just hope more people get to use it and remove the insidious Facebook comments system. I refuse to comment on any blog that uses Facebook Comments.Any blog owner who is serious about having a proper comments system on their blog will choose Disqus. Facebook has one tenth of the functionality and is basically nothing more than a “toy” comments system.

      1. Fernando Gutierrez

        Same here. Whan I see Disqus I feel impeled to comment and when I see FB it’s the other way. Maybe it’s not rational, but it’s how it is.

    3. obscurelyfamous

      I think that we’re made obsolete if we ever offer a lesser product (or stay stagnant), and I don’t see us letting that happen. But if you’re speaking more on a intrinsic, fundamental level: I think that perspective also says that FB makes any social service on the web obsolete… and I definitely don’t believe that’s the web we’re living in.

      1. Spencer Rascoff

        A huge congratulations to @danielha:disqus and Disqus for having achieved what they’ve achieved, especially on small staff of just 16. That’s extraordinarily impressive.However, I do share the same concerns that several people have already posted about facebook comments being a real threat to Disqus. (And I suspect that there are more readers who share this concern than have actually commented, since regular readers of AVC know that this is home-field for Disqus lovers.)I do use Disqus on my personal blog, and I like it a lot. In particular, I love the ability to moderate comments via email, a feature which @fredwilson:disqus first made me aware of via AVC. However, we have switched to fb comments on my company’s blog (ZillowBlog) because it helps drive more traffic to the blog when people’s comments are added to their fb status. This should scare disqus a lot — when we sat down at @zillow:disqus to decide what comment system to use, it wasn’t even hotly debated — fb comments hands down. If more publishers like Zillow and Techcrunch opt for fb comments, that should be concerning to Disqus, even if their feature set is better than fb’s, which is probably is.

        1. obscurelyfamous

          Thanks Spencer, good points. There are def things for us to tackle.

  5. Tom Hughes

    Disqus is by far the best commenting solution out there, and I’m seeing more and more people (not necessarily bloggers) post a link to their Disqus profile. Fred, you wrote something a whiles back about people having partially- and non-overlapping social graphs; the opportunity for Disqus seems to be that they are everyone’s “what I think” social graph: different from “who I like” (Facebook) and “who I work with” (LinkedIn).

    1. fredwilson

      very true

      1. markslater

        Bang On tom – the big fail with facebook comments (aside from the crappy product and features) is that i dont want my “work related disqusions” on my wall.I come to places like AVC to test ideas, and learn from people in a professional sense – i dont come really to “hang out”.facebook is far too much a school playground frankly – and i am using other services now (including our company’s new service) to communicate with tighter concentric circles of friends where interests are shared.Disqus for me is the go-to tool for managing my conversations out of “the school playground”.the problem is – all paths seem to converge at this playground lately – its getting really annoying actually.

  6. Sebastian Wain

    Congrats to Disqus!Is it only my opinion or Disqus needs a broader search engine? I see the [technical] features growth very similar to twitter: search engine, discovery of blogs/people based on discussions.Because it adds a lot of value if searches on Google returns comments on Disqus and help find new stuff. Blekko was doing a lot of deals recently integrating other services within their search engine.

    1. awaldstein

      Great comment. I’m in agreement with you.The depth of comment ‘content’ can drive better search results and the depth of implicit interest connections can drive dynamic discovery.Non trivial pursuits but powerful ideas.

      1. Sebastian Wain

        Thanks Arnold.I really think that the blog search space is broken.I feel it needs to be more balanced to discovery than “page ranking”. There are millions of blogs with few readers and inbound links that have an incredible quality or importance.

        1. awaldstein

          True. Discovery is the flip side of commenting systems and the flip side of curation.A number of commenters on my last post (http://bit.ly/jp8JsE) touched on this. It’s challenging but the right direction to be moving in.

        2. falicon

          I agree with this…discovery is something we are trying to fix with knowabout.it…and we have had Disqus as a ‘wanted’ source for our system since the start of our todo list (but their current API doesn’t yet allow for what we really want to do with it)…but agree, there needs to be a lot more focus on fixing discovery across all these services (and I think disqus can play a big and very important roll in it) — @falicon:twitter

          1. Mark Essel

            Have you spoken with their team about the kind of structure you need in the data? Their api hasn’t progressed quite as fast as their UI.

          2. Tyler Hayes

            To echo @VictusFate:disqus ‘s sentiments, feel free to shoot us a message at http://disqus.com/support (or just share your thoughts here) with what specifically you were looking for in the API and what you’re trying to accomplish; we might have some suggestions. We’re always looking to improve and would love your feedback too.

          3. falicon

            Cool thanks will do (I’ve bounced various things off Daniel in the past as well…it’s mostly just a matter of you guys having other things higher up in the priorities so far).

    2. Fernando Gutierrez

      Another feature I’d love is to be sent by email new posts in a site when they are published. I know Feedblitz or Feedburner do that, but they do it at given times of the day. When you get notified you may be late to the discussion.In WordPress you can subscribe to a site. They send you each post when it’s published. If you combine that with a subscription to comments and being able to reply from email you don’t need to go to the site if you don’t want. You would need to be careful with subscriptions to avoid going mad, but I’d like it.I know may people don’t want more email, but I like discussions like the ones being held here in my email because they come in chronological order and I can consume them in small bites. My problem with Disqus here is that while you post others are doing it at the same time in different discussions and you can get lost easily not knowing what you’ve read and what you’ve not.

      1. phollows

        Hi Fernando:FYI FeedBlitz has an “Express” schedule publishers can choose if they want faster delivery (we also have weekly, monthly and manual schedules too, depending on publisher preferences).Best,Phil HollowsFounder and CEO, FeedBlitzAuthor: List Building For Bloggers

    3. obscurelyfamous

      We’re still trying to turn search into a unique Disqus product. Right now our search powers some parts of our product and will be a core piece of an upcoming one. But search alone isn’t a product for us yet because, honestly, I don’t think it’s interesting yet.

      1. Sebastian Wain

        Daniel, I understand that your focus is different but I have a recommendation for minimizing the work around the search that you can add to your future analysis: http://indextank.com/ this is being used in sites like reddit and wordpress.I believe Fred backed one of its current investors in the past.

      2. ShanaC

        Do you think that is true of search overall?

      3. FAKE GRIMLOCK

        THIS WHY ME LIKE DANIEL. HIM HAVE DINO-LIKE FOCUS. CHASE VISION, NO GET DISTRACTED BY VALLEY FADS.

  7. Create a New Lab

    —I like Disqus because it allows to add (and change) a link to our sites and projects in the signature without spam the comments with off-topic links—also, the #1 Disqus’ competitor (the Facebook comments system) still has some bugs and limits—

  8. LIAD

    Big fan of the product. Very bullish on their future.I get the sense the guys behind it are product obsessed and highly focused.I love the constant UX & UI iterations and the fact they’ve achieved so much with such a small team.That they seem to shy away from the hype/party circuit of other hot VC backed startups endears them to me even more.They’ve a huge opportunity, not just powering comments, but owning the decentralised Social ID and elastic interest graph. – if I was Daniel – I wouldn’t waste 2 seconds caring about what Facebook are doing in this space.

    1. DarkUFO

      Awesome comment.Daniel and his team are a very cool group of guys and everytime I’ve had an issue their support team is on the case.

    2. Peter Sullivan

      Ignorant to say “don’t care”. That is not how the battle is won. I think care a lot, think outside the box, and build better product

      1. LIAD

        agreed. flippant use of langauge.he should care about their product & strategy etc and study it closely – which I’m sure he is, but shouldn’t care/feel disheartened that they are in this space and ostensibly directly competing with him.

    3. awaldstein

      ‘elastic interest graph’…music to my ears.Want to elaborate more on the ‘decentralised social ID’?

      1. LIAD

        They’re on 750,000 websites. They know my name, bio, website/twitter URL, they have my profile picture – why not provide an authentication & social layer. …Facebook connect, just not shite.

        1. awaldstein

          This is the dream of online communities since the beginning. We dreamed of this back when I was at a company called Electric Communities back in the 90s.

          1. andyidsinga

            hey, @awaldstein:disqus, I used to to work at The Palace …which eventually ‘merged’ with electric communities …was my first job at a startup:)

          2. awaldstein

            Andy…EC was my first job after Creative. I was part of the EC/Palace/Onlive merger team so maybe we intersected.@markjeffrey (Palace/Mahalo/ThisWeekIn) and I met then. My homage to Mark and others and their connection to what Disqus is today @ http://bit.ly/mpkatv.

          3. andyidsinga

            nice post. did you ever visit the beaverton palace office? I didnt know the california team too well back then and i ended up leaving for another startup very soon after ( like a week ).Palace was great fun and very good for my career – was when i crossed from tech support into software development :)I remember being particularly impressed by the OnLive audio guys 🙂

        2. Fernando Gutierrez

          The last iteration of the dashboard made them a real/full social network. Many of us are not using it a lot, but I guess we will with time.

          1. andyidsinga

            i love love love the disqus dash board – icon on homescreen big time 🙂 🙂 🙂

  9. Tom Labus

    What makes this work is the participation of the author. Without that part “comments” run pretty hollow, pretty fast.

  10. Michal

    Nice numbers, congratulation!But the pragmatic part of me asks: What about income? Is there any? I don’t see it.

    1. fredwilson

      yes, the serve high end publishers (VIP) and blogger/blog networks (Pro) with paid services

    2. Shyam Somanadh

      Quick back of the envelope calculation:They have about 500,000 communities.If they have a hypothetical paid client base of 2000 ($19pm), 500 ($200pm), 50 ($1000pm) they can easily do ~$190000 per month in revenues.Opex is basically: ~100 servers, ~20 employees and office space. Can’t make an estimation on that since I am not familiar with what those things can cost stateside. But I can imagine the revenues being not insanely far off from opex.All-in-all, not a bad run rate for the kind of investment they have taken.

  11. scottythebody

    I love Disqus, other than the fact that their WP plugin removed all of my pre-Disqus comments from my blog and I’ve never figured out how to get them back 😉

  12. Kasi Viswanathan Agilandam

    with just 16 people (do they sleep?). … marvelous and congratulations to the team for bringing out such a good product.

  13. awaldstein

    Congrats to Daniel and the team on the numbers and the round.16 people. Amazing focus. Remarkable achievement. Great launching pad for the future.35 million active commenters-wow! That’s an interest graph!

    1. obscurelyfamous

      It was fun seeing you this week.

      1. awaldstein

        Great meeting you and some of the team as well Daniel.

  14. Terry Meehan

    What — no marketing hires? 🙂

  15. Farhan Lalji

    Wondering what they need the capital for? Is this a case of founders taking some cash off the table?

    1. fredwilson

      can’t reveal specifics but when you are serving 500mm users worldwide, there are scaling issues, both technical and operational

      1. RichardF

        I’m still waiting for a post on that 😉

      2. Dave W Baldwin

        Good job funding Disqus. I love the backing up of doing something big w/o the need of 100 something employees.Have fun smiling when 1 billion users is reported 😉

    2. Mark Essel

      I can imagine it’s growing pains and role outs of planned features.

  16. Kate Huyett

    Great news for the Disqus team. They have been incredibly focused on execution and I can’t wait to see what they roll out over the next year.

  17. jeff

    Oh no you didn’t! “disqussions”!All kidding aside, how do you pronounce “disqus”? I, for some reason, have chosen to always pronounce it as “dis-kiss”…. do the founders pronounce it like “discuss” ?

    1. sbmiller5

      They pronounce it “Discuss”

  18. KirstenWinkler

    I am not exactly sure when I installed Disqus on my blog but I it must have been in early 2009, pretty much after the launch. Since then I am a huge fan of this product for many reasons.The obvious one is that it turns any blog or website into a more vivid place. But there is much more to it. More than any other system Disqus can provide the entire web with a unified social layer. Communities are not tied to single sites anymore, they can freely move from one interesting place to another.This is a huge benefit for everyone involved. For bloggers and website owners it brings new traffic as people easily recognize other members of their Disqus circle. It is therefore also an awesome discovery tool for new interesting people and content. And from my perspective this is really only the beginning.Disqus, like Color, are a new breed of implied social networks and there is a good chance that Disqus will become equally important as Facebook, if not more.

    1. awaldstein

      Hi Kirsten, great to see you on avc.com.I’m wondering whether in the online/social education world that you blog on, there is much adoption of Disqus, especially in Europe?In the wine world which is in its social infancy, it is just getting a foothold.

      1. KirstenWinkler

        Most blogger in the education space are teachers in the classic sense or school / university staff. They usually prefer easy hosting solutions to running their own blogs / web hosting.A very popular host for education related blogs is http://www.edublogs.com which is basically a vertical WordPress.com and as far as I know they are using the standard WordPress comments structure.Another big chunk of educators is very active on Ning which showed massively when the service switched to premium. The outburst was so intense that Pearson hopped in and is now sponsoring educational Ning networks.Blogger like I or company blogs of edu 2.0 startups usually use Disqus or recently Facebook comments.

  19. smartone2

    I am still waiting for Disqus to realize a universal search..it would be very powerful to be able to search for keywords and topic over all the disqus boards

  20. Drew Shannon

    I love having Disqus on my blog, and it makes me sad when other blogs I visit don’t use it.

  21. Steve Hallock

    Disqus has undoubtedly driven me to much higher engagement with the blogs I read and been a seamless solution for my blog. Congrats to the team!

  22. Emirulug

    Does anyone know which e-commerce sites implemented Disqus and using it successfully? What you think about disqus on e-commerce sites as a replacement for in house product comment tools?

    1. fredwilson

      here is one examplehttp://www.redstamp.com/pro…

  23. Tereza

    Thrilled to see their news as I’m a total Disqus flygirl.’Disqussion’ — that’s very cute, @frewilson.One critical Q, though, that’s bugged me forevah and I think we need to clear the air.How the hell is Disqus pronounced??? Logic says ‘discuss’, but me and everyone I know say “diss-kiss”. Really annoying, for something I use every single day.Any designs on using some of that moolah to buy Discuss.com?Just sayin’. 🙂

    1. fredwilson

      you say it right flygirl

      1. Robert Holtz

        “Diss-kiss”? I thought DISQUS was pronounced to rhyme with DISCUSS.So when you coined the word “Disqussion”, that was to read as “diss-kiss-shun”?

        1. obscurelyfamous

          It’s pronounced like discuss. @fredwilson:disqus definitely knows this.He either read @Tereza:disqus ‘s comment wrong or he’s trolling y’all.

    2. LE

      The name is a problem and yes they need discuss.com as well as other typos. The “q” after the “s” is difficult just to start. (Even though they aren’t a destination site.)discuss.com is owned by FMA a big player in the domain business.The best value FMA will get for this name is from disqus.com (and they know that) so it’s just a matter of how they are approached on this domain. They don’t need the money so this is a situation where the right strategy and other things of value would probably be more important than just the dollar amount offered. (And to decide the strategy you need to understand the domain owner and their motivation other than money.)

      1. awaldstein

        As a discussion point LE, yes buying the domain is logical.But if you aren’t a destination site, the domain purchase is neither categorical for search nor memory enhancing for direct bookmarking.It’s advertising. Is that what you are suggesting?

        1. LE

          The name disqus.com simply isn’t a good branding for what they are doing *given* the problems of human memory. Yes they are successful. Yes they’ve built the business up. It would be better to go random and memorable then this particular made up word. (But cheaper to just buy discuss.com)( “Comscover.com and “Comscovery.com” a portmanteauof their mission is available but also has drawbacks of course.)You don’t want to make it hard for people to find or remember your website. Whether that be a vendor, someone who you met at a party, or on a train, or someone who doesn’t have the site bookmarked and is just trying to remember it for some reason.Every name of course has the potential to be typoed no matter how perfect of course. But can you imagine being mentioned on Nightly News or radio and someone not being able to find it by ear? What’s the value of that lost publicity as just one example.

          1. ShanaC

            I personally happen to love their name, it is a homonym to what you do with it… I just find the branding awkward because of spelling. thought we’ve been through this issue

          2. awaldstein

            In concept I agree and thanks for the detailed response.Yes, there are good and not so good names. But they are only what you make them to mean over time.

          3. FAKE GRIMLOCK

            ME, GRIMLOCK, SAY YOU WRONG.NO ONE GO TO DISQUS.COM FROM ADDRESS BAR.THEM GO TO BLOG, SEE LINK, CLICK IT.IT HARD TO SPELL SOMETHING WRONG YOU NOT EVER TYPE.

          4. LE

            I expected approval from you DINOCAPS! It’s as if you are saying “if you build a better ‘SAUR the world will beat a path to your door”. Why not try to help squeeze the nth sales opportunity out of a situation (as I’ve mentioned by my examples of other reasons) the additional name would be helpful? The name is valuable it’s just a matter of price. Companies pay slotting fees in supermarkets to be eye level and for endcaps to increase sales. In publications you want to be on the right side of the page upper right. The only question is “how much is it worth” not “should we”. This is not “instead of disqus”, it’s “in addition to disqus”.

          5. Donna Brewington White

            My .02 — love the name as is.

          6. Dave W Baldwin

            Shana is right about the homonym and remember that Disqus has 500mm users per month. Once it is being used, the user doesn’t care how it is spelled.They can achieve the next true goal post of doubling w/o doing discuss.com because to honest, discuss.com is too vanilla and will confuse things.Keep it as is… you can have more fun with potential tags with Disqus.

    3. Mark Essel

      huh, always thought it was pronounced dis-cuss.too late now, it’s ingrained.

    4. Ro Gupta

      it’s officially “discuss” @Tereza:disqus but I’ve been lobbying for a rebranding for a while now with limited support

      1. William Mougayar

        You got the wrong Tereza (could be a tweak in your stemming algorithm during look-up?) It’s @terezan:twitter And I’m sure it’s not pronounced like Tarzan.

        1. Ro Gupta

          @terezan:twitter is her Twitter handle but I believe @Tereza:disqus is her Disqus username: http://disqus.com/tereza/

          1. William Mougayar

            You’re right. Sorry. The Twitter & Disqus profile links look the same. Maybe change the styling slightly to better differentiate?

          2. FAKE GRIMLOCK

            THAT GOOD IDEA.ME, GRIMLOCK, NOT EVEN KNOW THERE TWO KINDS OF LINKS.THAT BAD UX.

        2. Tereza

          ROTFL!!!!You may be Tarzan, but ME be JANE.There IS no other Tereza, my friend. OK, total lie, lots of Czech and Brazilian hotties but only MOI has it on DISQUS. For some reason DISQUS today is logging me in via iPhone as a phantom, sans profile pic.(Speaking of, did I mention that Fred doesn’t like my profile pic? Said it doesn’t look like me. Pfft. Help me exact revenge! On honestlynow.com you can Friend Fred and then vote Yes or No on his geek-chic reading glasses….and see what the Pros told him, too.)

          1. William Mougayar

            That’s funnyI thought HN was only for women

          2. Tereza

            Turns out men really like it too. Who knew?So now we’re “for women…and the men who love them”.Are you in William?

          3. William Mougayar

            Yes, I signed up from Day 2.

      2. Tereza

        I’ve just written 2 comments as replies to a ‘You were mentioned on DISQUS’ email but it doesn’t post to those comments. They should, as if they were regular replies, don’t you think? Since I’m used to that in a regular alert, I took it for granted that that’s what happens.

        1. Tyler Hayes

          You’re right they should post as replies. We’ll look into that; thanks for the heads-up.

  24. George Lucas Bowen

    They are doing a great job with getting rid of the douchebags per @sacca:twitter . I actually comment on blogs now BECAUSE of Disqus. Great stuff.

  25. daryn

    I have a hard time bringing myself to comment on any other system these days.I was actually discussing Disqus with a fairly large blogger a couple nights ago, who was asking what I thought about him migrating from Disqus to FB Comments. Trust me, I told him! 🙂

  26. mohitranka

    @fredwilson:disqus what is Disqus’ revenue model?

    1. fredwilson

      they offer VIP level service to large publishers and “pro offerings” toblogs and blog networksboth are paid offeringsthey have a lot of paid customers

  27. Shyam Subramanyan

    Like many indicated here, Facebook comments just don’t work for a simple reason – we don’t want our worlds to collide. For a quick laugh, here’s a relevant clip from Seinfeld that I tweeted back when Techcrunch switched to Facebook comments.http://twitter.com/#!/shyam

    1. howardlindzon

      love that clip. so funny

  28. Yurtdışı Eğitim

    Hi !What is the future of Disqus??

  29. paramendra

    There are people who are surprised Disqus has grown even more since Facebook walked into the comments space. I find that reaction odd.What Disqus Can Learn From Boxee http://bit.ly/lszRX0

    1. Mark Essel

      Yeah more large market attention is better for them, much like when Facebook went into location and Foursquare skyrocketed.

      1. paramendra

        When a big god moves into your space, it is validation, and users flock to you.

  30. William Mougayar

    Commenting is a staple of social media.I love Disqus, but frankly-I’d like to see them innovate more. They have been managing growth well, but can they innovate now? So many product ideas out of their data. Let’s hope the new money does it.

  31. Eric Friedman

    Congrats to disqus and cool to learn about this feature.They immediately ease a pain of publishers and continue to produce innovation on top of the original idea.

  32. Sean Weinstock

    Can someone help me better understand the ability for a blogger/website to mineDisqus/FB Comments for data after having installed? Been thinking about commentary for a little while, and it seems like this point would be pretty pivotal in deciding whether to build an internal system or outsource the commentary.

  33. Dan

    Very cool Fred, didn’t realize Disqus is in your portfolio. I use disqus on a number of sites and I really like it. It’s a good product so I assume it will continue to do well.

  34. obscurelyfamous

    Thanks for the love @fredwilson:disqus . We’re entering the second act of Disqus and it’s going to be fun.This community also discovered a new feature that’s in testing right now. Sorry for any bugs at the moment… it’s still not fully public and we’re polishing things up for a wider rollout. Love the opinions and feedback so far.

    1. JLM

      Perhaps it would be useful to reduce the size of the indent in showing a commentary thread in order not to limit the length of the chain. At the end of day, Disqus exists to facilitate conversations not to limit them.Perhaps a grahical re-set button?

      1. CJ

        Totally agree – I hate the depth limits on replies.

        1. FAKE GRIMLOCK

          ME, GRIMLOCK, JUMPING ON LIMIT HATE BANDWAGON.THAT PROBABLY BREAK BANDWAGON.

          1. Mark Essel

            Maybe chain depth limited to 3 so we can always reply?

    2. Rocky Agrawal

      @danielha:disqus When I click on fredwilson in the comment above, I get your profile, not @fredwilson:disqus

      1. Rocky Agrawal

        And when I click on either Daniel or fred in my comment, I get my profile.

      2. obscurelyfamous

        Yup that’s one of the bugs.

    3. fredwilson

      there is so much to love about disqus!

    4. ShanaC

      Try having “AT” ( i can’t put the symbol in and just leave a space, it is preventing me from posting) feature link into the main email chain. I don’t want to be told I am mentioned per say – I want to be told that I am part of the conversation so I can jump in.

  35. Douglas Crets

    I am very happy that Disqus exists.

  36. Ryan @ Linkbuildr

    We’ve been using it for a couple years and it’s a huge help in keeping the spam out and the social media participation/integration in…win friggin win!

  37. Rocky Agrawal

    If I were recruiting for an online role, I’d try looking up someone’s disqus profile to see where they were active online.

    1. Kate Huyett

      Interesting use case. I’ve looked at a candidate’s blog and at their Twitter feed, occasionally at LinkedIn, but never at Disqus.

      1. Rocky Agrawal

        In pre-Disqus days, I once nixed a candidate who on the resume looked great, but was an obnoxious jerk in comments on professional blogs. I’ve also sourced people based on their blog comments.Disqus would make that a lot easier. (Though in my experience, most recruiters never go beyond what they see in a resume.)In the mid- to long-term, I think sites like Quora or tools like Disqus could be used to generate a kind of FICO score on topic expertise.

        1. Kate Huyett

          Fascinating. I’ve never been big on resumes — usually prefer people who have “imperfect” resumes as their stories tend to be more interesting and their experiences more broadly applicable.The FICO score on topic expertise is also interesting in that it creates a clear bias towards people who err on the side of creating content & asserting themselves.And this right here is a great example of the value of comments — this was one of the most unexpected insights of my day – thanks, Rocky.

          1. Rocky Agrawal

            The one feature I’d really like to see is Disqus automatically highlight people with overlapping interests.For example, I recognize your name from Quora and probably a couple of other blogs. It would be nice if I were on Mark Suster’s blog and saw a comment from you, there would be an indication that I know your from A VC.This happens over time naturally, but Disqus could accelerate the connection process.

          2. fredwilson

            totally agree

          3. Kate Huyett

            absolutely. something like a rapportive-style widget that shows latest tweets/comments/blog posts/quora answers/etc? A few people have noted here that they like that using Disqus for comments rather than Facebook helps them keep their personal and professional lives separate, but I would happily integrate many services with my Disqus profile for exactly the experience you’re talking about.

          4. ShanaC

            what if i only comment on sites with one particular interest? One of my favorite sites uses disqus, and i have never commented (passive observer). How are we supposed to create that sort of emergent behavior

          5. awaldstein

            The community that exists in the connecting threads between the blogs themselves.I buy into this completely.

    2. Douglas Crets

      I’d also engage with them through comments and even try interviewing themlive on video to see if they understand the space, and if they feelcomfortable being the face of a company. After all, everyone is the face ofthe company if the company is a social web organization. too bold?

  38. Zachary Reiss-Davis

    This is great news for a really impressive startup; I’ve been very happy with their product whenever I use it as a consumer (often on this site!), and the announcement caused me to write a blog post about how B2B companies should strongly consider it on their websites as well: http://blogs.forrester.com/… . I’d be really interested to see any true B2B examples they already have, if anyone knows of any.

  39. Katelyn Friedson

    Discussing Discuss on w/ @fredwilson:disqus Age: 4, Funding: 10M. Market Share: 75%. Unique !users: 500M. Employees: 16. Focus: Priceless!

  40. andyidsinga

    _start_bragspam_@andyidsinga:twitter (yours truly) totally asked @disqus:twitter for the @ feature via twitter on april 8 🙂 🙂 🙂 here: https://twitter.com/andyids…_end_bragspam_Very coool!

  41. Andrew

    Can I add one more thing I love about Disqus that I don’t see mentioned often, including by the Disqus team? It’s the ability to “like” posts at the bottom of the page.Sometimes I want to indicate that I enjoyed a post, but don’t feel like writing a comment that says nothing more than “this was good!” If I see that Facebook button, I will almost never hit it because I don’t want to be link spam on Facebook– plus, people on Facebook will not necessarily be interested. Disqus’ button lets me give feedback to the author without having to spread the word on other networks that may not care (though it gives me that option).This seems to be the idea behind Google’s “+1” project , but by itself I don’t really see it catching on. Disqus has a good thing here, and one that I’m sure could be made useful in other ways down the line.

  42. William Mougayar

    I love this title “Disqus Laughs At Facebook Comments, Releases Impressive Stats” from @blpro:twitter http://www.bloggingpro.com/

    1. Dave W Baldwin

      Thanks William…everyone should tweet this!

  43. Eric Leebow

    Congratulations to the new investors, and Disqus! It’s truly a great service, and every blog should use it for its commenting needs. Disqus is amazing, thanks for creating such a great service!

  44. ShanaC

    @danielha:disqus The one thing I really think is important long term is that when you like a post here, it also forces a like into facebook if you allow facebook access to your disqus profile. Mostly because the more likes/shares on facebook a given link is given, the more likely it will show up in stream for an audience

  45. Rocky Agrawal

    @ShanaC:disqus (reached thread depth limit so starting anew)If you haven’t commented on the other site, from a privacy perspective, i don’t think it’d be appropriate to publish the fact that you’re on that site.The bar could be as low as that you liked content or comments on the other site — as long as you’ve publicly expressed an affiliation with the site, it seems reasonable. But exposing your lurking would be bad form.

    1. ShanaC

      i agree from a privacy perspective – however something I am noticing is that going online can cause one dimensional views of a person. How do you get them to open up?

      1. FAKE GRIMLOCK

        WITH SCALPEL?

        1. ShanaC

          do you have an internet scalpel? I’d like to see that…

      2. Tyler Hayes

        What do you mean by one dimensional? Why do you need to get them to open up?

        1. ShanaC

          If I don’t participate in a forum about drawing, how do you know what my charcoal preferences are?

  46. William Mougayar

    Replying to @terezan:twitter On this cinque de mayo, and surrounding the mystiqueAround Disqus name,- that is so obliqueI’ll be the last one to critiqueCause Disqus and Eqentia share the Q, it’s fantastiqueOr some may think, it’s angeliqueNot as far as MozambiqueOr even MartiniqueThere’s something about this blog’s physiqueWe’re all in this same boutiqueOr is it just a cliqueWe share the same pratiqueCommenting here as a practice is antique

    1. awaldstein

      Finally a great Canadian poet;)

  47. Ryan Sarver

    Congrats guys on the continued success!

  48. FAKE GRIMLOCK

    HOORAY! DISQUS GRIMLOCK’S MOST FAVORITE INTERNET THING. IT MORE BETTER THAN TWITTER.EXCEPT WHEN IT NOT WORK, BUT THEM PRETTY GOOD AT FIX FAST.

  49. Jluna

    I was very interested in Disqus for a mobile product. I wrote into their email form twice and writing into support asking about their paid products, with no response. I was very turned off by this lack of attention to something as important as a sales contact form.I ended up turning to Echo stream server. Echo ended up being very responsive and garnered our business.

    1. obscurelyfamous

      Sorry about that. I’ll dig into this and see where we failed.[edit] Just checked. Looks like you used our support form and it went into a spam bucket for some reason. Apologies — your email address is whitelisted so if you decide to submit something in the future we’ll see it.

  50. Aaron Fyke

    This is my first comment with Disqus. Apologies for not contributing to the discussion – I’ve been a long-time lurker and I’m curious to see how participating changes things.

    1. Ro Gupta

      We’d love to hear your thoughts if you’re willing to share, Aaron – hello at disqus dot com. Esp. on how you could get more out of Disqus as a lurker vs. as a regular commenter.

      1. Aaron Fyke

        I don’t have much to report just yet. However, I will mention that I spend a lot of time on Reddit.com, and I think their mechanism of voting up/down content works really well. I’m not sure if the “Like” button serves a similar function.One thing I will say is that I’m not sure who the primary beneficiary of Disqus is – is it the blog hoster (in this case Fred), or the blog commenter. I’m reading comments that imply both parties benefit. I don’t know if there’s a FAQ to be read, or I’ll just discover the benefits over time. I’ll send you my comments once I’ve got a better feel for things.

    2. fredwilson

      participation makes reading AVC even better!

  51. Rohan

    Thank you Fred. I am new to your website and was referred here thanks to your article on the difference between first time entrepreneurs and serial entrepreneurs which I could relate to!I love Disqus and use it on my blog (thanks to rave reviews in a Mark Suster blogpost) and I’ve loved it!

  52. richardgarand

    As impressive as the accomplishments are – the fact that they’ve done it with a small team makes it even better. I always like seeing efficiency like that. Congrats to Disqus!

  53. pbreit

    Disqus is nice except it only has one other competitor, livefyre, which is nicer.

    1. fredwilson

      i’ve never seen a livefyre threadcan you point me to one so i can experience it?

  54. Guest

    These people are so smart! I was going to do a test comment to discover (disqover?) whether the Twitter or Disqus name is the one recognized in the comments and the dropdown list appeared with both! Smart is so refreshing!

  55. Guest

    Late to the party (and this is a party). Traveling.Congratulations Disqus team! I absolutely <3 Disqus! So many right things being done right. and team truly understand and respond to the needs and patterns of their market (users) — they even anticipate us — so when they lead us by introducing new features, I tend to give them the benefit of the doubt and expect that it’s probably a good thing. Can’t say that about all social networks. I’ve been continually delighted by the ongoing developments — one nice surprise after another– makes me as a user feel cared for. Thanks Disqus team for “getting” us and truly serving your users.You’re the standard.

  56. Donna Brewington White

    Late to the party. Traveling.Congratulations Disqus team!I absolutely <3 Disqus! So many right things being done right — including being responsive to concerns.@danielha:disqus and team truly understand and respond to the needs and patterns of their market (users) — they even anticipate us — so when they lead us by introducing new features, I tend to give them the benefit of the doubt and expect that it’s probably a good thing. Can’t say that about all social networks.I’ve been continually delighted by the ongoing developments — one nice surprise after another– makes me as a user feel cared for. Thanks Disqus team for “getting” us and truly serving your users.You set a standard.

  57. howardlindzon

    Congrats team disqus and fred

  58. Zoey Bee

    if only I didn’t work three jobs already, Disqus would be a first choice. But cheers to them. I wish the economist would use disqus too, I comment there very often, and it’s very difficult to follow the thread 🙁 there are also some professors whose commentary I’d like to follow but they don’t have disqus. I’m friends with said professors on facebook, but fb can’t beat disqus…. by a long shot. Hope they keep up the good work!

  59. Guest

    google will make a play for disqus sometime

  60. BuyGiftsItems

    I didn’t know the new york team well back then & i ended up leaving for another startup very soon after.Auto Auctions

  61. Scott Cofer

    Love Disqus, and I’ve been using it for quite a while as my commenting system of choice. Haven’t gotten into the social aspect as of yet, but just got notified of followers via email – that was unexpected. I’ll have to explore the community aspect of the service more, rather than simply relying on it for the comment management.Excited to see where Disqus goes from here …- Scott

  62. Haukur Guðjónsson

    I have just started to use the Disqus comment system and already I like it very much, far better then the wordpress comment system I used before.

  63. Muskie

    I’ve always been a fan. I think Klout and those companies should really be looking at DISQUS as another platform to measure online influence and network size/scope.