

Three Reasons To Use Disqus - dshah
http://avc.blogs.com/a_vc/2008/05/three-reasons-t.html

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mosburger
OK, this might be a really stupid question. If so, I apologize, but...

What happens if Disqus goes out of business? Do all of your comments
evaporate? Or are the comments stored locally somehow?

~~~
bootload
_"... What happens if Disqus goes out of business? Do all of your comments
evaporate? ..."_

A quick look at the website would reveal, _"No"_ ~
<http://disqus.com/help/#faq-6>

    
    
      I use Disqus because it gives me 
      "the freedom to leave" at anytime
    

Understand that data _"Lock-in"_ is the new _"Lock-out"_. If Disqus does
collapse, I still have my data because I have access to it now. To understand
why this is important read about _"The zen of free"_ ~
[http://asay.blogspot.com/2006/06/simon-phipps-on-zen-of-
free...](http://asay.blogspot.com/2006/06/simon-phipps-on-zen-of-free-
osbc.html) by Simon Phipps.

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fortes
What about the loss of page rank and search due to content not being hosted on
your server? Could disqus perhaps allow you to use a custom subdomain (such as
disqus.yourblog.com)?

~~~
quellhorst
Disqus comments are included via javascript, so you don't have outbound links
that diminish pagerank.

Comments won't be indexed by Google but your article text and links to the
article from other blogs will have a bigger impact on where you appear in
SERPs.

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jwr
One bit of information is missing:

what's the price?

~~~
aneesh
Disqus is free for bloggers

~~~
kyro
I don't think he's talking about a monetary price, rather sacrifices that
bloggers might be making to use their service, as others have pointed out here
- page rank, etc.

~~~
jwr
Actually, I was talking about both. It's all good and great that they'll host
my comments, but how do they make their money?

I need to know this in order to migrate.

~~~
DougBTX
Hmm, no obvious way to make money, do we assume they last until they run out
of VC money?

~~~
ivankirigin
An obvious way to make money: Persistent reputation is extremely valuable.
Extended and deep information about a user from their writings and the sites
they visit is extremely valuable. Think about the targeted advertising down
the long tail, where eCPM will be huge.

~~~
DougBTX
I'd hope their plan is more than to reach some critical mass then start
inserting ads into people's blogs. Will it be "put our ads on your blog, and
we'll split the profits" or "pay for Disqus or we'll put ads on your site"? I
guess we'll wait and see, perhaps they'll manage to productise it, if they've
not reached the maximum price point yet.

~~~
ivankirigin
There are many ways for them to make money. My point was to counter your
comment that there were no obvious ways.

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gexla
I am not convinced. I do see the advantages but I would rather have the text
on my blog. The comment text gives your blog a little more life in the eyes of
Google and adds just a little more content.

If I don't want to mess with creating a comment system then why did I build my
own blog in the first place?

I think a good compromise to make things easier for the commenter is to use
Clickpass for easy login.

I don't mind that my blog is being commented other places (like we are doing
here for this entry) but if a commenter is at my site then that is where I
want my text to live.

~~~
ssharp
It's a two way street - a long discussion on a topic with a specific keyword
can hurt your ranking for that keyword if the discussions aren't using the
phrase you're targeting.

I love the quick and easy functionality that Disqus has and am using it on a
few of my blogs. I'd like to set it up for my companies web properties but am
reluctant because we already have our own login and user systems.

------
gaika
And the biggest reason not to: javascript is required. It causes really bad
problems in IE: [http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2008/04/23/what-happened-
to...](http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2008/04/23/what-happened-to-operation-
aborted.aspx)

~~~
ssharp
I'd have to think that they are working on an API solution that will have MT
and WordPress plugins that use it...The JS problem is just too big not to be
addressed.

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Xichekolas
He forgot the most important reason (to me): You can stick a fully functional
comment system on anything without doing it yourself. Why reinvent the wheel
and deal with managing your own when you can just tack on an excellent system
by someone else?

~~~
gexla
How far do you want to take this though? Why not just use Blogger or
Wordpress.com? Why custom code your own blog?

BTW, I assume you are talking about a custom coded blog (or whatever is being
commented) because systems like Wordpress or ExpressionEngine make adding
commenting trivially easy.

~~~
Xichekolas
I have coded my own blog in the past, and yeah, after a while it's boring and
so I just use Blogger now. But you can stick comments on more than just blog
entries.

At least I was under the impression that you could put Disqus comments on
anything really (is that not true?). It would be trivially easy to make a site
like HN... just a list of links and with disqus comments for each of them. I
am working on a project right now where people can suggest strategies for
something and others can comment on them. Disqus would be an easy fit there as
well.

You could host your own photos with some quick gallery code too, but why not
let Flickr do it? I think Disqus is in the same category.

~~~
brlewis
Yes, you can put Disqus comments on anything that's for public consumption and
has a permalink.

If you enable Disqus comments on OurDoings, any photo you deem worthy of a
caption will get its own comment thread.

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njetx
We've been looking at adding CoComment to our site which I think is very
similar. I have been using it and I like the way it records all the comments I
make which I can then go back and refer to. However, it feels like we provide
them with new customers and we don't get a ton back in return.

Anyone implement it or Disqus?

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DenisM
I'm surprised at the number of websites that hide, or as in this case do not
have search functionality. Isn't that the first thing you want to do when you
arrive at a forum and have a question?

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andybelike
do any social web apps use disqus?

