Centralized Comments: Intense Debate vs Disqus
February 18th, 2008A centralized comment system takes the commonly seen discussion portions of a weblog, online journal, or other such device and offsets it to a centralized service. In other words, instead of using the comments built into Wordpress, Flickr, Tumblr, LiveJournal, or whatever other service you might use, that functionality gets offset to some other centralized service. It still appears in all the places it used to and makes it easy to group the discussion with the original content. But, additionally, it provides a lot of extra functionality for both the content creator and those participating in the discussion.
To those participating in the discussion, it provides a clear path toward having a single account (or only a handful of accounts) for comment creation. For those that regularly comment on many blogs, this will be a huge timesaver and a reduction of frustration. It also allows users to keep track of what they write in various places online as well as those comments that have been replied too. Additionally, it allows them to keep track of comments that their friends and other respected people may have left on other blogs.
As a content author and media creator, the concept of a centralized comment system may not seem immediately useful. However, providing a clean, consistent interface to commenting and making it as easy as possible to do so fosters more participation — and more participation only means more traffic. Additionally, it can save you some server load as you no longer have to host the meatier portions of those features. Finally, it can allow you to provide features you may not have been able to before including adding comments to a site that wasn't even comment-enabled before.
Currently, there are two centralized commenting systems that seem appealing: Intense Debate and Disqus.
Intense Debate seems the most interesting to me at this time. First, it supports OpenID making it that much easier to get people involved. There also seems to be more momentum behind the project than with Disqus and the developers seem to have a similar mindset to how I would build it if it were mine. There is a planned API (so that Javascript is less required) and importers planned for many platforms. It's not all the way there yet. Without the API, content authors can't benefit from the Google-Juice that is provided with the discussion being a part of their site. And the current wordpress importer simply doesn't work for me. It formats the comments poorly, and fails to import all of my entries. But, it's a work in progress and I understand that. I should be getting a beta version of the comment importer later today to test.
Disqus is more independent. You could use discus as a threaded discussion forum without an accompanying website, if desired. For some, this is a "pro". For others, it doesn't matter at all. There's no OpenID support in Disqus either and they don't even have broken and/or experimental comment importers to test. But their API is complete and they seem to have a nice handful of features planned for the future.
Unable to decide which is better, I've decided to give them both a test drive.
I've installed Disqus at revjim.net. I've installed IntenseDebate at Arranging Light. As soon as I put the final touches on my TumbleLog, it'll be using IntenseDebate as well.
Let me know what you think of these tools. After all, it's as much for you as it is for me.
This is a test. Now please show me some comment love.
Hello from JS-Kit. We'd like to invite you to take a look at our services as well. These include a full-featured Comments system, as well as Ratings, Polls, Reviews and our newest offering, "Navigator". With over 17,000 sites already using our services, and a full suite of content-generating services to drive it, JS-Kit's profile (with OpenID support) will trump anything currently in the market when it goes live. Please contact support@js-kit.com if you have any questions. And thanks for your consideration.
Cheers,
Eric
JS-Kit
Thanks a lot for mentioning this. A quick look at your site and its offering is very promising. I'll give it a deeper look in the next few days.
It's good to know there is such variety in this particular segment of web-space. :)
Hi Eric -
You guys have a really cool company,with lots of neat tools! But regarding your statement about 17,000 sites using your services, could you be specific about how many sites are currently using your comment functionality, as opposed to all of your other various widgets?
Cheers
Tom
Intense Debate
Let me know whats up after you play with the importer for ID. I would like to import my previous comments, but let the users that have registered "claim" those old comments. I would also like to try and import the comments "threaded" since Ive been using the Brian's threaded comments plugin for a few months.
On another note, the developer of ID emailed me after I installed it to let me know there was a CSS issue with my install and he fixed it. I had no idea what he was talking about but I thought it was nice.
I can't be certain without trying it, so you're my Guinea Pig. But,
just based on poking around at this and that, it looks like Disqus
will allow response via email too. So... we're about to find out as
I'm responding to this via email.
I'll let you know what I decide in a future post. Looks like JS-Kit is
another contender worth trying out.
As far as regaining the threading from your original comment system...
that might be a bit more difficult. However, if I can get my hands on
exactly what Disqus/ID/whatever is looking for in the way of an import
file, I may be able to help you get threads out of the data you have.
Also... I think Disqus has a way to "claim" comments too. Not sure
though. You left your comment unregistered (which would be the same as
it would be imported, I would guess). So, go try to claim this comment
now and see if it works.
Oh my goodness. That worked! WOW.
Regardless of any other features, this one feature alone may indeed "seal the deal".
Hi RevJim -
Here is some comment love for you!
We love feedback - please share with us your results and thoughts...
A couple of further comments:
- in the near future we'll be expanding the "claim your comments" functionality even further
- We'll be launching reply-by-email in our next major release
- We've been playing with Twitter and MyBlogLog integration...have any thoughts on this for us?
- Any other cool features you'd like to see? We're listening!
Cheers
Tom
Intense Debate
Tom--
Reply-By-Email is incredibly useful. It makes managing a blog by Blackberry, iPhone, or any other email capable device much easier. Features like this go above and beyond what people expect from a comment system and really add value for the content author as well.
Claiming comments is another one of those things that makes transitioning to your service easier to swallow.
I'm not that concerned with MyBlogLog. And, while I'm a Twitter user, I can't quite see how I'd want this integrated with a comment system other than as a quick clip on my profile.
As far as other features go... of course...
I'd really like to see a webservices based API for retrieving comments. While this type of integration is actually more complicated that a two or three line javascript segment, many users will find it more desirable.
In the meantime, disclosing a list of the API and Javascript style calls you have made available currently would go a long way toward helping more savvy developers get up and running faster. I had to twiddle with your code and my Wordpress templates blindly and repeatedly to get integration to work well.
More to that point, I still can't figure out why the comment box would not show on some posts here on revjim.net. If I knew more about what your service was actually doing and/or expecting, I could figure it out on my own.
As I type all of this I realize another useful feature: an Ajax based auto-save. Any second now my browser could crash or I could hit the wrong button and close this window. Knowing that my work was being saved periodically until I finished is quite handy.
Thank you for your interest, your support, and your diversity.
Daniel/Jim
Jim -
Thanks for the feedback. All duly noted.
API - forthcoming, but not tomorrow...it's important, and we'll wait until it's mature and stable before launching it.
Reply-By-Email - almost here!
Comment box invisibility - huh, first time I've heard of it. Can you send an email to support (at) intensedebate (dot) com with your contact info and specific details? We'll get it right...
Cheers
Tom
Tom-
API/Reply-to-email: Good to know. I look forward to both of these features.
One thing about Reply-By-Email (or any email notification, really)
that is VERY important (and ID doesn't do) is to give a link that will
return directly to that comment. In one ID-using blog that I follow
that tends to get a lot of comment traffic, I have to scroll a lot
just to find the place that I'm supposed to reply at. Very annoying.
(For those stopping by and keeping a tally, Disqus does this already).
As far as the invisible comments go -- it's not doing it on my other
blog so it must be something specific with this one. If I convert this
one over to ID instead of Disqus I'll send an email in to support to
show the problem if it still occurs.
Anything else I can do to help, please let me know. I want a best of
breed service just as much as you do. :)
Daniel/Jim
i found intense debate to be useful, i found it on constantskeptic.com.
Like I said in this post, I'm using both of them for the time being to
decide which is more useful for me. Look for a full review in a few days.
Looking forward to it. :)
Btw, are you using the notification functionality to post comments?
If I understand you correctly, then, yes. I simply "reply" to the email
message that Disqus sends me when someone comments. It seems to have
worked perfectly so far. Despite that fact that email isn't really
supposed to be instant, I generally see my comments appear within a
minute or two, which is fantastic!
More on this today. :)