

Automattic (Wordpress) Has Acquired IntenseDebate’s Enhanced Comment System - calvin
http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/09/23/automattic-has-acquired-intensedebates-enhanced-comment-system/

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sidsavara
I am using Disqus right now on my blog, it'll be interesting to see what WP
does with this. The bad news for Disqus is the _just_ added a feature to their
plugin so that comments are now stored both locally as well as on disqus.com -
meaning you could drop Disqus and you wouldn't lose any comments. If ID does
become default on all WP.com blogs, I think it would probably snowball and
convince me to go over to ID as well - the whole point of disqus was it was
more prevalent on blogs _I_ read, so I figured my readers would be more likely
to have disqus accounts.

Of course, if you're on HN, you might have both =P

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SwellJoe
_The bad news for Disqus is the just added a feature to their plugin so that
comments are now stored both locally as well as on disqus.com_

This "bad news" was reponsible for a lot of folks switching to Disqus. We were
waiting for the feature for our blog, and switched within days of its release.
I don't think many serious bloggers are willing to put their community history
into the hands of someone without knowing they'll be able to get them back
out. So, I don't think this can be viewed as a bad thing, no matter how things
shake out--that's just a big batch of users that would have never been Disqus
users, if the feature didn't exist.

And Disqus does have the pretty clear market lead...but they will need to keep
innovating rapidly to keep growing that lead, particularly in the interim as
ID lives in "private beta" while the WordPress folks do whatever it is they're
doing with it.

~~~
sidsavara
I agree, I am not saying that it was a bad move. I'm saying that it's
unfortunate timing for them that a lot of the people who dipped their toes in
specifically because they didn't have to commit to Disqus may very well jump
ship now.

Basically, they gave their users an option to leave if something better came
along. If ID integrates with WP.com and everybody ends up having an ID
account, that would probably be the "something better" that would push people
over to ID.

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drusenko
anybody have any idea of the acquisition range? was this a sub 1M, 1-3, or 3+?

~~~
mattmaroon
I'd give about a buck fifty for ID.

~~~
mattmaroon
What, too high?

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calvin
Here's IntenseDebate's blog post about it:
[http://www.intensedebate.com/blog/2008/09/23/automattic-
acqu...](http://www.intensedebate.com/blog/2008/09/23/automattic-acquires-
intensedebate/)

A quote from their post for anyone worried that it'll be WordPress exclusive:
"You will still be able to use IntenseDebate on Typepad, Tumblr, Blogger,
Movable Type, and other platforms with more to come!"

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zaidf
Time for Disqus to release a Wordpress competitor, ie. a new open source
blogging platform.

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tptacek
WordPress isn't where it is today because it's the best blogging platform.
It's become the de facto standard. This might not be the best strategy for
Disqus.

~~~
mattmaroon
"Best" is a relative term, but Wordpress became the de facto standard by being
it for the most uses of the word.

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unalone
This is the second TechStars company to be acquired, right?

Congrats!

~~~
rokhayakebe
3rd.

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ivankirigin
My intuition is that this means Disqus wins.

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rokhayakebe
I respectfully disagree with your comment. It is like saying Google acquired
Omnisio, so the other video annotation sites won. If anything Automatic will
integrate the new commenting system and Pooof IntenseDebate will be on n times
more blogs.

"My intuition" is Intense debate will see more comments than Disqus. But this
does not mean Disqus is in trouble either. I use Disqus sometimes on enabled
blogs and it is a great product.

~~~
tptacek
Strongly agree. Converted our blog to Disqus a few days ago. First impression
with this post, "shit --- can I convert?". Apparently not; they're private
again. Expecting we'll be Intense Debate by WordPress 2.7 release.

