I've had each of these commenting systems installed in various places in my network of blogs. Additionally, I've used the blogs of other people using these services to get a feel for the user side of it. I've also tested a handful of other systems brought to my attention, none of which were as personally useful as these two.
After all this, which system do I like best?
The short version: Discus. Read on for the longer version.
The product offerings are very similar and function in much the same way. For most uses, I feel that either is a vast improvement over standard comments. Intense Debate has a couple of features that best Disqus. However, it also has one flaw that Disqus gets absolutely perfect and that was the deciding factor.
First, what's better about IntenseDebate? To start, it looks nicer. I prefer the clean interface of Disqus admin interface, but, for the appearance on the weblog that it's being used in, IntenseDebate wins my vote. Of course, this is a matter of taste, but I'd bet most people would agree with me.
Secondly, are the importing features. IntenseDebate has an import feature, Disqus currently does not. Of course this is really only half a point because the standard importer version doesn't work all that great and actually failed to import my comments in full. I was offered a beta version to test, but, I don't really feel like undoing everything just to turn around and redo it to get a feel for how the systems work so I didn't bother. From what I was told about the beta version, it probably works better though, it does so in a fairly strange manner that may not be the greatest for everyone.
Finally, there's OpenID support. IntenseDebate has it, Disqus does not.
So what's so great about Disqus and so flawed with IntenseDebate that it would trump these two things? Ease of use in regard to comment responses.
If you have a weblog with a very active comment board, just scrolling through the comments to find what you're looking for can be difficult. There are two ways to solve this. One is to provide a link in the notification that takes you back to that specific comment on the blog. Then finding the comment you are replying to is easy and replying is a snap. The second way is to allow the actual comment notification to be replied to directly. Disqus does BOTH of these things. IntenseDebate does neither.
Without a simple feature like this, it makes replying to a comment on an active comment board a real chore, and most certainly deters users from participating in discussion. It's this small thing that makes all the difference to me.
For the future, IntenseDebate says they are adding reply-by-email features. Before then, adding a more proper comment link in the notification email would be drop-dead-simple. So it's not like they have a long way to go to catch up. Of course Disqus says they are adding OpenID support and importing. What's really going to seal the deal on these systems tomorrow is their ability to import as well as their ability to innovate additional features in this young market niche.
I'm signing on Disqus' dotted line for now and hoping that, in the end, they prove to be the most innovative. But I'll be watching IntenseDebate very closely as well.
I've got a lot of ideas that would make either one of these services really stand out and I certainly understand the value of being the first as well as the most popular. After all, I've got years of experience doing those very things. Based on this, depending on who does what first, it's still anyone's game. And, I'm sure there's enough room in the market for a close second.
