Webware

Universal comment add-on system Disqus is the latest company to pledge allegiance to Facebook's Connect platform. Users will soon be able log in to comment on Disqus-powered blog posts with their Facebook ID. Meanwhile these comments can be pushed back to the user's Facebook news feed, completing the circle.

This is a big deal for blog owners who may feel a little finicky about going through with a full Facebook Connect install on their blog. Considering the main point of registration often comes when users want to dip into a discussion this was the next logical step for any third-party comment tool. Better yet, the commenter, who is spending time on their blog and getting involved in the conversation is beaming this back to Facebook where others may find the post and chime in as well.

Facebook Connect log-ins are not turned on by default. Blog owners must first acquire an API key from Facebook and toggle it on, alongside other optional Disqus add-ons like Seesmic video comments. Disqus co-founder Daniel Ha says blog owners should see it activated on their blogs by the end of the month.

The change may be a little bittersweet for Disqus, which had effectively created its own universal profile system. The good to come out of this is that a greater number of users are likely to sign up for the service since they're now able to do so with their existing Facebook log-in.

Related: Facebook Connect officially open

Disqus admins will find a new option in the settings menu that lets them hook up to Facebook Connect via API key.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

On Tuesday, blog commenting add-on tool Disqus is launching version 2.0 of its free service. Many of the biggest changes are on the back end, but the user-facing elements have been given many small tweaks that should make it a faster, more approachable solution for the mass market.

I chatted with co-founder Daniel Ha about it on Monday, and he says one of the biggest changes blog owners are going to notice is the plug-in support. The plug-in with the most improvement is WordPress, which can now be moderated from inside of WordPress' admin area instead of on Disqus alone. (Download WordPress from CNET Download.com.) All comments are also synced up both locally and to Disqus' servers, so if Disqus goes down your comments won't. Likewise, you'll be able to copy over Disqus comments to your existing system if you decide to ditch it later on down the line.

For commenters, the experience has also been improved. Gone is the up and down voting system, which has been replaced with a simple up button to give a good comment a nod, and smarter tools to flag offensive or otherwise spammy comments. Commenters who write a veritable opus can now turn that nine-paragraph work into its own standalone blog post that lives right on Disqus' servers, where other users can comment and interact with it. Ha says he's not trying to take away from existing platforms, but give these really good, in-depth comments their own place to start another conversation without completely thread-jacking the conversation that's going on there. Think of it kind of like FriendFeed, but using the same engine people are used to.

Disqus' new comment admin area lets you quickly remove, restore, and jump user comments from one blog or several at once.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

These are just some of the improvements with the updated platform. Disqus comments are now SEO-friendly systemwide, so your blog posts will be indexed both by content and discussion. The administrative area of Disqus has also been tweaked slightly to be simpler to manage across multiple blogs, although there's still no way to mass delete messages via search query, or select multiple messages from a list like you can in some blogging tools' stock comment systems. After having used Disqus to power our Webware 100 2008 award pages, the lack of mass edits and deletes was one of the only weaknesses that really bugged me. Luckily it's something Ha says is working in testing and will be coming soon in another update.

Disqus is currently in use with about 30,000 blogs and competes with tools like SezWho, IntenseDebate, and JS-Kit to enhance the built-in functionality found in mass-market blogging platforms. To play around with the new system I've embedded it below. You can also check it out by visiting one of our Webware 100 2008 winner profile pages.

Video and text don't always go together, but that's not stopping video and audio microblogging service Seesmic from partnering with the distributed comment tool Disqus. Starting Wednesday, users of Disqus will get the added benefit of video commenting alongside the text entry field.

The option is turned off by default in Disqus, and must be enabled by whoever is administrating the account. We've gone ahead and turned it on in the Webware 100 winner pages, where we've been using Disqus since unveiling the 100 winners late last month. I've also added it to the end of this post, where you can add your own video comment after the break.

One small hiccup I've found is that Seesmic won't pull in your Disqus account information. You've got to be registered with the currently private alpha service to have it linked up with any sort of account. Otherwise you're limited to leaving an anonymous comment that can later be reclaimed when you get Seesmic access. Disqus founder Daniel Ha tells me the two companies are working on deeper integration for user authentication, but in the meantime anonymous recording is the easiest option for people who don't yet have Seesmic accounts.

I'm still not sold on the trend of video commenting. It's a bit gimmicky, and as others have said, it makes conversations difficult to parse. Ideally I'd like to see services like Seesmic partner with Jott to add a small transcript under the comment that would save me some time, and improve the experience for search engine bots, the deaf, and others who don't feel like watching and listening to what could be a simple sentence or two of thought.

Adding video comments to your Disqus account is as simple as clicking a check box. By default video comments are turned off until a Disqus admin turns them on.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

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Yesterday we were all aflutter over Disqus (review) and Intense Debate (review)--two companies offering similar products for replacing an existing blog comment system, and one is centered around universal profiles and comment tracking. Today we're taking a look at SezWho, a comment enhancement service that's been around since June (we briefly wrote about them last month), and has since been integrated into more than 300 sites.

Instead of replacing your current system, SezWho layers on a reputation and rating system to your comments. Registered users can vote on the usefulness of other people's comments, and that rating goes into an aggregate ranking that's a part of a user's profile. Like the solutions from yesterday, rankings are universal on any site that's integrated SezWho, meaning you're taking a track record of all your posts with you to other sites, where other users can explore what you've been commenting on, and how other users perceive you. The goal is to help sites sort out the good and the bad (employing self-policing from the users), and simultaneously letting people share and explore links amongst themselves.

Show off your most established commenters with SezWho's Red Carpet widget.

(Credit: SezWho)

This morning the company is announcing several new features. Two--one for site owners, and one for SezWho users at large--are all about user visibility. The first, called Red Carpet, is for site owners, and is similar to the top-users widget I mentioned with Intense Debate. Red Carpet lets site owners promote some of their most active discussion participants with a visual ranking widget that can be put anywhere. In a perfect world, users will see this somewhere and either explore some of the content these users have been reading, or feel the need to participate to get a place on the list.

The other widget is a SezWho profile badge, which users can post on any blogs or personal pages. Mousing over the badge causes it to pop up with a user's SezWho profile, including links to their latest comments, and other user ratings. Between the two, I see Red Carpet getting more traction, as blog owners seem more likely to promote the use of such a system to give their blog, and some of their older posts additional exposure in other parts of the SezWho network.

The new profile widget can go anywhere. Mousing over it would give you a quick look at a SezWho member profile.

(Credit: SezWho)

What might end up being the most useful addition is a new set of metrics rolled out last week to both SezWho users and blog owners. Users get to see a more open set of stats about how many people are rating their profile and comments, while blog owners get access to a new internal tracking tool that shows where any incoming SezWho traffic originates. The data charts aren't as extensive as something like Google Analytics, but it's a nice addition for site owners to keep an eye on user involvement.

On a side note, our (CNET's) TalkBack commenting system has a similar feature for rating a user comment's usefulness, and users can hop between our various sites with one account. The biggest difference is the option to jump to other sites with that same ID.

I must say, I really like the idea of SezWho. Comment rating is a very useful way to sort through the good and the bad--assuming your audience is keen and plentiful enough to make it worthwhile. Where SezWho inherently falls short is how deeply it can be integrated. While it's nice that you don't have to replace your current system, you're missing out on a single user profile for both the site and commenting system--something which is possible with larger Web-based blogging platforms like Wordpress.com and Blogger.

Consider today two-for-Tuesday on Webware, because we've got another universal comment system coming out of private beta today. This time around it's Intense Debate, a new service that replaces your blog's standard commenting system with an enhanced version that features analytics, user profiles, and a tracking system.

Like Disqus, which we looked at earlier, Intense Debate is full of all sorts of commenting goodness like deep structural threading, an up or down voting system per comment, and integrated user profiles with reputation. You also get the bonus of a really slick dashboard that lets you track which posts are getting the most comments (with shiny charts) and some community tools like an easy-to-use widget that lets you promote some of your top site commenters on your front page--similar to what several popular Weblogs Inc. blogs used to do.

For the sake of your users, there are also some handy ways they can interact with Intense Debate's system without getting jettisoned off the post. For example, users can register with the service right in the comments field, either using their registration system or with an OpenID. They can also subscribe to the post's comments RSS feed (which Disqus also has) as well as sign up to get notified when someone replies via e-mail.

Switch the style of your site's comments on the fly with one of three built-in styles included.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

What I find most appealing about Intense Debate's approach are its setup tools and administrative controls. Besides some of the visual analytics I mentioned earlier, the setup to white or blacklist certain words or phrases can give you a whole lot of control over automating comment moderation. You can pick one of three ways you want comments to appear on the page, and even tweak the look and style of them with one of the included themes, or use the version that will try to mimic your site's design--which I found to work only so well on a custom Wordpress blog. Advanced users can go in and skin the heck out of the thing by linking up to a custom CSS file.

The big thing services like Intense Debate and Disqus offer is the holy grail of a universal ID for comments, something I touched on earlier when taking a look at Disqus' approach. I think the hardest hump for these services to get over--a problem a product like coComment doesn't have--is that it requires adoption by content providers instead of users. I'm happy to install a browser plug-in or sign up for one account in one place, but blog owners with closed or proprietary systems will have a tougher time making that kind of move, unless these services offer significantly more to users and site owners than other plugins or built-in user registration tools on popular platforms.

To see Intense Debate in action, here are a few blogs that have integrated it:
The Gong Show
Colorado Startups
The Thinking Blog
TechStars

Intense Debate comments in action as seen on ColoradoStartups.com.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

There's a new universal comment system launching this morning called Disqus (pronounced "discuss") that's aiming to improve the world of commenting for both users AND blog creators. Their take on comments is a little bit like OpenID's stance on logins: give users one identification for many places, while mixing it up with the social tracking capabilities found in coComment and Twitter.

Blog owners who install Disqus to replace their default commenting system get the added benefit of creating a separate forum for each post that mirrors whatever discussion is on the comment thread. In return, users can maintain the same Disqus identity on multiple sites assuming blog owners are willing to buy into the system. Unlike a comment tracking system like coComment (review) however, the onus to be a part of the community falls on the site proprietor instead of the user.

A comment thread in Disqus features multi-level threading, and ways to vote up or down a single comment. You can also check out someone's clout without leaving the page.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

As a commenting system it's very full featured. There's threading that I tested to go six levels deep (a step up from most default comment architecture), and a per-comment voting system that lets users vote on the quality of a response using up and down icons. Users can then sort the comments by chronology, or the most votes on the fly.

Also worth noting is the profile system, which like coComment, lets you see a user's list of comments, and links to where they've been making them. While you can comment anonymously to your heart's content on any Disqus comment board, you can also come back later on to claim your profile in order to start maintaining an identity on other sites--a kind of "try before you buy" approach. If you end up claiming your profile on one site, your "anonymous" identities on other sites will link to your identity.

One neat takeaway is that Disqus lets you track other Disqus users in a similar fashion to Twitter and coComment, throwing all their latest comments (and links to where they've been reading) into one public stream. As an added bonus, each user gets a "clout" rating, which is an aggregate measure of how their comments are being rated in various networks. The higher the clout, the better their perceived reputation is to other casual observers.

Disqus is free, and works with major Web blogging platforms like Wordpress, Blogger, Typepad, and MovableType. If your blog falls elsewhere, there's also a snippet of javascript code you can drop into every post, or add to your site's post template to add Disqus comments. I've embedded a Disqus comment module after the break, so feel free to give it a spin.