Posts from Daniel Ha

Our portfolio company Disqus has been building its next generation commenting system which they are calling Disqus 2012. They are getting ready to release it into beta and they are looking for bloggers who want to be beta testers for it.

Daniel wrote this on the Disqus blog yesterday:

Disqus 2012 is a fresh take on the Disqus system — both a bit of rearchitecting and a bit of reimagining. We think we can build a version of Disqus that fully resonates with our original purpose: build delightful discussion experiences for the participants.

If you are a blogger and would like to be a beta tester of Disqus 2012, then you should sign up to be a beta tester at Disqus Labs. You'll be asked to take a very short survey in order to join. I just did it. It took me less than three minutes.

Also, at Disqus labs, you'll see a cool real-time comments map that you can filter by domain and a forums like web app that was built on the Disqus API.

I have seen Disqus 2012 in action and it will be running here on AVC as soon as Daniel will let me have it. I am confident it will lead to a lot more engagement and activity. Which is saying something since we aren't lacking for any of that right now!

AVC community regular RichardF suggested a while back that I do Feature Fridays. I'm not sure I can do it consistently week after week, but I'm doing it this week because we have a new feature to disqus.

Disqus has launched "ranks" here at AVC. It is not available across the entire Disqus Blog Network yet. They are giving it a spin here at AVC to get some feedback.

If you look at many of the comments, you'll see a little black "badge" next to the commenters' names. That badge means they are a community regular and that Disqus has been able to give them a community rank. I am fairly certain (but not positive) that these ranks are community specific, meaning they only apply to your activity here at AVC.

There has already been some discussion of the algorithm used to calculate these ranks. Fernando saw the ranks in yesterday's comment thread and did some number crunching. Disqus CEO Daniel Ha replied with some information on what data is used in the ranks algorithm:

We're using a few different signals for ranks right now, including visiting frequency, post, replies, likes, reciprocation of those things, being the first to comment in a thread… etc. 

We're playing with the balancing to see what feels right, but I figured the AVC community wouldn't mind playing around with some unpolished features! We're listening to any feedback you guys may have.

So the Disqus team is watching and listening to what we think. Disqus away!