Debating Disqus – Seems Stupid

80 | Posted In Blogging by David

I’ve thought about it. I checked out Disqus and pondered the idea of using it for this blog. I see that some other bloggers are using it. But, it is a bit of a scary proposition at this point. Why?

I generated some talk in the last couple days about comment fragmention. There are comments on your blog and then there are the ones out on FriendFeed and other similar services. At the end of the day, I don’t personally care where a conversation takes place. At the same time, though, it is nice having comments ON my blog.

What bothers me about Disqus is the notion of completing hosting my comments elsewhere. That is like the complete end game of fragmentation, leaving nothing left at the source. Of course I can display the comments here, but they are stored somewhere else.

So, could I bring the comments back into WordPress if I chose? From this discussion, it seems the answer is no but they are working on it. And what happens if Disqus goes the way of the dodo? Did I just lose everything? Also, it seems as if you can’t moderate your own comments inside WP anymore. Apparently, they are working on a plug-in for that. So, not only are all my comments now on a remote server, but I have to separately log into a remote server to moderate them?

Fred, from “A VC”, listed his 3 reasons to use Disqus. Problem is, only one of those reasons is compelling: the ability to have shared profiles across blogs. I like the centralization. Kinda like FriendFeed. The other two reasons are mute because it can easily be done with a plug-in. Scott points out the drawbacks of Disqus quite well, actually.

So, it leaves me wondering, why the hell are so many bloggers (over 4,000 of them, according to their site) converting? Do they want the centralization so bad that they’re willing to throw out the baby with the bath water? It seems to me like you would be completely killing all the benefits from having comments on your own site.

Seems like a bonehead move to me at this point.

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  • http://scobleizer.com Robert Scoble

    Keep in mind, my own blog isn’t on my server. it’s on WordPress.com, a centralized service with millions of blogs. Funny, it’s down tonight for the first time in more than a year. Which sorta argues your case, although my own server would be down too sometimes.

    Anyway, I’m looking at putting Disqus in place so that more of our stuff shows up in aggregator sites like FriendFeed. The identity system that comes with a centralized service is good for me too, because it should bring less spam. I hear Automattic is working on its own comment system like that, though, so I might just wait it out.

  • http://scobleizer.com Robert Scoble

    Keep in mind, my own blog isn’t on my server. it’s on WordPress.com, a centralized service with millions of blogs. Funny, it’s down tonight for the first time in more than a year. Which sorta argues your case, although my own server would be down too sometimes.

    Anyway, I’m looking at putting Disqus in place so that more of our stuff shows up in aggregator sites like FriendFeed. The identity system that comes with a centralized service is good for me too, because it should bring less spam. I hear Automattic is working on its own comment system like that, though, so I might just wait it out.

  • http://mrontemp.blogspot.com/ Ontario Emperor

    In my case, Disqus seemed smart. I’m a Blogger user, and my blog is hosted on Google’s servers, so the fact that Disqus is also hosted is not a big concern to me.

    What IS a concern is that Disqus content is not visible on my current device – a first generation Motorola Q with Windows Mobile 5 and Internet Explorer 4. (And yes, they’re working on mobile access.)

    Other than that, I love the application, and their customer service.

    But I am fascinated by the response to your post; from the reaction, it almost looks like you ran over someone’s grandmother! If you question FriendFeed now, you may be sent to a re-education camp… :)

  • http://mrontemp.blogspot.com/ Ontario Emperor

    In my case, Disqus seemed smart. I’m a Blogger user, and my blog is hosted on Google’s servers, so the fact that Disqus is also hosted is not a big concern to me.

    What IS a concern is that Disqus content is not visible on my current device – a first generation Motorola Q with Windows Mobile 5 and Internet Explorer 4. (And yes, they’re working on mobile access.)

    Other than that, I love the application, and their customer service.

    But I am fascinated by the response to your post; from the reaction, it almost looks like you ran over someone’s grandmother! If you question FriendFeed now, you may be sent to a re-education camp… :)

  • http://www.pcmech.com David

    Ontario, that already happened. :) I questioned FriendFeed’s noise level in a post a few days ago.

    Scoble, I do like the centralization of Disqus, as you do. It is just concerning to add a second point of failure. Honestly, if the WordPress folks did it, I’d be a little less concerned.

  • http://www.pcmech.com David

    Ontario, that already happened. :) I questioned FriendFeed’s noise level in a post a few days ago.

    Scoble, I do like the centralization of Disqus, as you do. It is just concerning to add a second point of failure. Honestly, if the WordPress folks did it, I’d be a little less concerned.

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  • Gomez

    MOOT!!! The word is moot, not mute! For %$@#$ sake, will someone learn the friggin’ difference?

  • Gomez

    MOOT!!! The word is moot, not mute! For %$@#$ sake, will someone learn the friggin’ difference?

  • http://www.thattalldude.com Shawn K

    While I understand where you’re coming from, and I haven’t implemented it myself yet, I think Disqus is a step away from comment fragmentation. They are making a comment service with enough leverage to integrate into sites like friendfeed and social thing, thus making it easier to find some comments. Currently, if somebody comments on one of my posts outside of my blog, I have to hunt it down. With Disqus integration into other services, it makes it much easier for me. They’re still young though, so I am highly curious what their next steps will be.

  • http://www.thattalldude.com Shawn K

    While I understand where you’re coming from, and I haven’t implemented it myself yet, I think Disqus is a step away from comment fragmentation. They are making a comment service with enough leverage to integrate into sites like friendfeed and social thing, thus making it easier to find some comments. Currently, if somebody comments on one of my posts outside of my blog, I have to hunt it down. With Disqus integration into other services, it makes it much easier for me. They’re still young though, so I am highly curious what their next steps will be.

  • http://blog.mastermaq.ca Mack D. Male

    I was going to write the same thing as Gomez…glad he beat me to it.

    I share your concerns and have thus far not given Disqus a try. Maybe I will when they have the ability to export comments.

  • http://blog.mastermaq.ca Mack D. Male

    I was going to write the same thing as Gomez…glad he beat me to it.

    I share your concerns and have thus far not given Disqus a try. Maybe I will when they have the ability to export comments.

  • http://www.js-kit.com Nancy Cole

    The biggest drawback of a destination site for your comments is that it will eventually draw traffic from your blog. When a user searches a subject, they are likely to wind up on the Disqus site, and not on your blog. We don’t need another destination site, imo. Nancy, JS-Kit.com

  • http://www.js-kit.com Nancy Cole

    The biggest drawback of a destination site for your comments is that it will eventually draw traffic from your blog. When a user searches a subject, they are likely to wind up on the Disqus site, and not on your blog. We don’t need another destination site, imo. Nancy, JS-Kit.com

  • http://eckenrodehouse.net Nathan Eckenrode

    i don’t particularly care about ‘keeping the conversation’ on my server, or not. i don’t particualrly care about keeping my data on my server or not- does it really matter- not in my case- i write about my baby (biological reproduction artifact) growing up and it really doesn’t matter where the comments are left. and in all honesty, i get more comments now using disqus.

    yes i realize my words here are anecdotal and therefore no supportive towards any argument except that not everyone thinks that the comments are a baby that could be thrown out like a bad metaphor. but then again i have no pretension of making a living as a blogger of any sort.

  • http://eckenrodehouse.net Nathan Eckenrode

    i don’t particularly care about ‘keeping the conversation’ on my server, or not. i don’t particualrly care about keeping my data on my server or not- does it really matter- not in my case- i write about my baby (biological reproduction artifact) growing up and it really doesn’t matter where the comments are left. and in all honesty, i get more comments now using disqus.

    yes i realize my words here are anecdotal and therefore no supportive towards any argument except that not everyone thinks that the comments are a baby that could be thrown out like a bad metaphor. but then again i have no pretension of making a living as a blogger of any sort.

  • http://www.phil-butler.com Phil Butler

    This is a very insightful article David. I was one one the fist to write about Disqus, and I must say I was initially impressed. However, Dan and his crew have sort of let me down in several areas. The original platform was extremely promising, but of late several issues have come to light.

    Some of these are highlighted by the intuitive readers here, but for the record here are some “real” issues:

    1) proprietary login = lock-in: disqus has a proprietary login. this means that a blogger/web site encourages it’s users create an identity within disqus. If the site chooses to remove disqus in the future then all of the identities disappear. If the site uses other web services then it’s
    visitors will have multiple logins for one site. Both instances are a disaster.

    2) Proprietary visitor profile: All of the data created in the disqus profile is locked into disqus. It cannot be accessed by other services or the visitor. Again, if the site adds other services then the visitor would have to re-upload the same data [avatar, name, etc]. This is a complete
    waste of effort forced on the visitor – both the site and visitor cannot exit disqus without losing all of their profile data.

    3) Monetization: Disqus is a for profit business. so where is the monetization model? Since disqus bloggers logins, visitor profile data, and community pages they are locked into a business model that is undefined. what if disqus starts showing ads on the community pages and the blogger disagrees? what if they start charging a monthly fee? What if they start a destination site around comments and charge the blogger for referral traffic [don't think this
    can happen? ask the sites that started using the "free" powerreviews service and then had to compete with buzzillions, or bazarvoice, etc.] Without a clear path for earning money and simultaneously being locked-in means that sites take a big risk when deploying disqus.

    In effort at full transparency, these points are all straight from the horse’s mouth at JS-Kit Khris Loux. I have close relationships with virtually every startup launched in the last two years and the good news for your readers is that Khris is not wrong. Disqus is a fairly powerful platform, but though I predicted it would overshadow KIT in the long term..even I was wrong. Loux and his team are efforting open source and transparency in the most credible ways. Disqus has a model that does not appear to have the user’s interest in mind.

    Regardless of how much we like an innovation, we must look at the vision and direction behind it. JS-Kit uses OpenID and allows full disclosure and sharing of their monetization plan and scheme. If appearances were everything, then no one would use another comment platform other than KIT. Yes, I work for them, but I also work for some of the best in the business and hand selected them as entities I wanted to be behind.

    If you look at the innovation, service, ideology and long term merit of Disqus versus JS-Kit with any depth perception at all …the evaluation is quite pat.

    Please let me know if you have any questions or issues and I will always help. Again, a very perceptive and valid argument going on here.

    Always,

    Phil Butler

  • http://www.phil-butler.com Phil Butler

    This is a very insightful article David. I was one one the fist to write about Disqus, and I must say I was initially impressed. However, Dan and his crew have sort of let me down in several areas. The original platform was extremely promising, but of late several issues have come to light.

    Some of these are highlighted by the intuitive readers here, but for the record here are some “real” issues:

    1) proprietary login = lock-in: disqus has a proprietary login. this means that a blogger/web site encourages it’s users create an identity within disqus. If the site chooses to remove disqus in the future then all of the identities disappear. If the site uses other web services then it’s
    visitors will have multiple logins for one site. Both instances are a disaster.

    2) Proprietary visitor profile: All of the data created in the disqus profile is locked into disqus. It cannot be accessed by other services or the visitor. Again, if the site adds other services then the visitor would have to re-upload the same data [avatar, name, etc]. This is a complete
    waste of effort forced on the visitor – both the site and visitor cannot exit disqus without losing all of their profile data.

    3) Monetization: Disqus is a for profit business. so where is the monetization model? Since disqus bloggers logins, visitor profile data, and community pages they are locked into a business model that is undefined. what if disqus starts showing ads on the community pages and the blogger disagrees? what if they start charging a monthly fee? What if they start a destination site around comments and charge the blogger for referral traffic [don't think this
    can happen? ask the sites that started using the "free" powerreviews service and then had to compete with buzzillions, or bazarvoice, etc.] Without a clear path for earning money and simultaneously being locked-in means that sites take a big risk when deploying disqus.

    In effort at full transparency, these points are all straight from the horse’s mouth at JS-Kit Khris Loux. I have close relationships with virtually every startup launched in the last two years and the good news for your readers is that Khris is not wrong. Disqus is a fairly powerful platform, but though I predicted it would overshadow KIT in the long term..even I was wrong. Loux and his team are efforting open source and transparency in the most credible ways. Disqus has a model that does not appear to have the user’s interest in mind.

    Regardless of how much we like an innovation, we must look at the vision and direction behind it. JS-Kit uses OpenID and allows full disclosure and sharing of their monetization plan and scheme. If appearances were everything, then no one would use another comment platform other than KIT. Yes, I work for them, but I also work for some of the best in the business and hand selected them as entities I wanted to be behind.

    If you look at the innovation, service, ideology and long term merit of Disqus versus JS-Kit with any depth perception at all …the evaluation is quite pat.

    Please let me know if you have any questions or issues and I will always help. Again, a very perceptive and valid argument going on here.

    Always,

    Phil Butler

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  • http://www.instrumentals.bizz.cc richardz315

    Nice post. but ive actually been thinking about adding disqus to my own blog

  • nightrz

    By far the best comment system i have seen . Thanks for sharing

    Best Regards,
    Mickel – Founder
    http://www.yourtvshow.com

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  • http://www.printingkent.co.uk Custom Printed T-Shirts

    dont be so hard on disqus

    any host/server can hit a problem now and again ;)

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    nice post, thanks for sharing :)

  • StevenTaylor

    I have a 2 years experience with commenting on Disqus blogs. At present, I don't know any other commenting system that has so many features and offers flexibility. Maybe blogware.com, but blogware has a lot of work to do in order to catch up with Disqus.
    _____________________________
    Business VoIP

  • http://freedomaintricks.blogspot.com mihir1

    disqus rocks buddy. its good you updated it.

  • http://freedomaintricks.blogspot.com mihir1

    Well its 50-50[:p]

  • CristianStar

    Some people are generous about disclosure, but you have to be very careful with a nondisclosure agreement. Breaking such an agreement can cost you a lot and even jail time.

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    This blog is so usefully, Thanks for the posted ;)

  • http://www.nextlevelblogger.com/about Christian

    Now that you have converted to Disqus, David, is there an update? Do you love it? I'm still about ownership. Disqus is cool, but I want control. I want ownership. At least that way when something sucks, at least I have no one to blame but myself. That's my take on it anyway.

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    Nice Post I already digged this

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