Encouraging discussion and community is an important part of the social web and Disqus has played a big part in one the most underrated parts of the social web – comments.
So I am intrigued by the teaser campaign that is going out around the web – expectations are definitely being raised. The video really doesnt say too much.. but it does sound like they are planning on uping the battle against Echo and Intense Debate.
On the administration side, I am definitely looking forward to a better management interface.. and hopefuly an easier way to find other people commenting on similar sites (though that last bit is speculation on my part); whilst for commenters the ability to go back and edit comments is a god send – how often do you notice a typo right after clicking submit?
What I really want is the ability to respond to comments on posts within my RSS reader (similar to the way Feedly does this with Friendfeed) and though it is not something Disqus can resolve, real time delivery of RSS feeds as most of the time conversations have already been had on the post by the time I receive it and everyone has moved on to the next conversation.
In this hype-bubble of real-time; they have managed to squeeze in the phrase on the video.. without really saying what it is. Maybe Daniel Ha will elaborate..
Anyhow here is the video.. and of course as soon as it launches it will be live on this website 🙂
Versions of this post have been sitting in my drafts for years.. it was interesting to go back and see the plugins I could not do without compared to today though I found that actually there haven’t been that many that have changed. Just new ones have come in and added to the funcitonality of WordPress.
I have dabbled with all the different third party social commenting tools over the years – Intense Debate, JS-Kit and Disqus – and lost comments as a result – but disqus seems to have a good balance of community vs features. There is of course Echo on the scene – which you can see here, which tracks reactions around the web – but whereas I initially thought it might blow Disqus out of the water, I am not so convinced now. Disqus already has that functionality. I think Disqus is already in a strong position to compete and grow.
For all those SEO tweaks to help with your search rankings. Given the majority of people who reach this site come from search, its a pretty important part of the mix for me. I don’t use it enough.
4. Feedburner feedsmith
Another simple plugin which does what it says on the tin. Diverts people connecting to WordPress‘ RSS feed to my feedburner account. Keeps everyone in one place – handy if I ever want to change URLs. It also allows me to track the number of subscribers and measure interaction with my RSS feed. (The URL to the page hosting the plugin seems to have disappeared 🙁 )
I have used a few Google Analytics plugins over the years and recently switched to this one, mainly as I saw it get a mention within a Google blog – its as good a recommendation as you will find 😉
I have used Sharethis in the past but this reduces the barriers to sharing even further (albeit with the loss of sharing with other networks) – from a rollover and click to just a click 😉
iphones, androids.. they can all surf the real web.. none of that WAP stuff of years gone by but that doesn’t mean you cant make the interface more easy to read.
I started using Zemanta again last week. It adds value to your blog posts (links, images, related links). Before it did it in a way to really seemed to highlight Zemanta everywhere. Now it is more subtle and just as usable. This one looks like it might stay a while this time.
I think it is worth doing this post annually to see how it changes even if it means I might have to increase it to my favourite 15 😉
Disqus released their new commenting system today. It adds:
# Comments are indexable by search engines (SEO-friendly)
# Export and import of comments
# Automatic synchronization between Disqus.com and your WordPress comments
# Uses the new Disqus API
# Moderate/administer your blog right from the WordPress admin
The important one there for me was the ability to import and export comments. It actually is not working for some reason right now (an export to Disqus gives an error) but I am hoping this is just teething problems. This feature meant I could move in the first place (as before moving to disqus meant a blackhole for any new comments), but it is also the trackbacks and larger userbase that makes me want to switch in the first place.
This does mean goodbye to Intense Debate for now – I loved the automatic export out of friendfeed provided by that service but the larger community of disqus hopefully will mean a greater number of people coming to this site. Not that I am ignoring Intense Debate – with the ability to import and export as well – I could move between providers with little pain – and not lose any comments in the process. This alone is going to make it interesting to see how this particular niche progresses. The competition is huge and with only minimal barriers to switch providers, somehow the commenting providers are going to have to balance innovation and stability to maintain their userbase.
