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My verdict on Disqus: Two thumbs up
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 — maybe to give the company some free publicity, who knows. In any case, he listed three reasons why he thinks every blogger should use it, including:
- threaded discussions
- email replies
- shared profiles
That was followed relatively quickly by a post from David Risley, in which he said that Disqus seemed “stupid”, primarily because the comments are hosted somewhere else, and therefore they don’t integrate with a blog’s existing comments and if Disqus disappears then those comments are gone for good. Others have noted that Disqus doesn’t support trackbacks either — which I have also mentioned in the past as a drawback of the system, and something I would like to see.
For the record, Daniel Ha of Disqus has promised that both trackbacks and data exportability are coming to Disqus, which would remove a couple of the major complaints about the service. But even with those flaws — or missing features — I am happy to use it, and Fred puts his finger on one big reason why: the ability to respond to comments instantly via email (and also to approve or delete spam via email). As Fred notes, this is huge. And it is handled seamlessly.
Spam — which Don Dodge mentions as an issue in his post — has also been virtually eradicated. I think in the months I’ve had it integrated with my blog, I’ve had Disqus email me twice or maybe three times with a possible spam comment, and in each case I simply replied with “delete” or “approve” and it was handled. Like Fred and Howard, I would encourage anyone looking for a better comment system to give it a try. The benefits far outweigh the drawbacks, as far as I’m concerned. Carlos says he thinks that Google should buy Disqus.
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Discussion
for “My verdict on Disqus: Two thumbs up”
Adding Disqus is one of the very best things I've done for my blog, period.
I would have to agree that it's right up there for me as well, Louis.
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.
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.
i didnt know disqus worked in socialist canada :)
Well, once I had it checked out by the appropriate government
departments and agencies, it seemed to work fine :-)
:) toucheeee
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.
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.
sorry to say, but intensedebate is better, i have used disqus a long time and searched and found the better alternative
What about intensedebate?
-Des
http://techwatch.reviewk.com/
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.
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
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.
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.
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! :)
Same here. I've started to install it on all my blogs :)
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
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.
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...
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
hey, disqus is good.........i guess it will become really big..... Ha is doing heck of a job........
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.
As far as I know, Cynthia, commenters get notified by Disqus when
there's a reply -- or should.
They do. Let us know if you're having probs!
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.