If you aren’t a blogger you probably haven’t noticed this company named Disqus unless you really are paying attention when you leave a comment. But head over to Dave Winer’s blog, click on the comments, and if you leave a comment there, like I just did, you aren’t actually leaving it on Dave Winer’s blog. You’re using Disqus’s commenting service.
“So what?” you’re probably asking.
Well, there’s a few things that Disqus does.
1. It hooks into FriendFeed. Why does that matter? Well, if you register your Disqus account (like I have) all of your comments left on blogs that use Disqus’s service, will show up on FriendFeed. Look at my FriendFeed stream. You’ll already see my Seesmic video comments that I left on some other blogs.
2. In the past hour they just turned on video comments thanks to a partnership with Seesmic. Go here to see my first video comment left on Dave Winer’s blog.
3. There’s an identity system. I don’t have to sign into comment on anyone’s blog who also has Disqus implemented. For instance, when I went over to costpernews.com and left another video comment there, I didn’t need to sign in. Plus my comments have my picture on them, which makes it less likely that someone will steal my identity.
4. Disqus comments are spam resistant. Because they use a robust identity system across blogs they can kick people off who misbehave.
5. Disqus comments are threaded.
Sam Harrelson was the first one to report the Seesmic/Disqus news on his CostPerNews blog.
Anyway, the reason I’m writing this is because the video commenting system is quite nice. Easy to use and easy to watch.
This is yet another piece in connecting us all together in the real time system I call “the World Wide Talk Show.”
Here’s some sites that have the Disqus/Seesmic commenting feature turned on:
http://loiclemeur.com/
http://louisgray.com/
http://shegeeks.net/
http://winextra.com/
http://avc.blogs.com/
http://howardlindzon.com/
http://scripting.com
More will almost certainly come soon. I’m looking at this technology too. I’ve been talking with Toni Schneider, CEO of Automattic (the folks who run my blog) and they are looking at a raft of things to do to make commenting better for WordPress.com users.
So, let the commenting wars begin!
If you are a blog owner, what do you think about Disqus? Like it? Recommend it to other people?
