"... Jason showed Disqus to me a few weeks back, and I seriously considered using it -- until I figured out that you don't own your comments anymore. ..."
A quick check of the faq, blog and api disproves this. You do own your comments and better still you can extract them via xml.
So you own your comments, can get access to the data. The only real data disqus can claim ownership is the right to infer from your data. It's this distinction that makes me think using the disqus service is valuable because they give you the ability to take your data away.
1) He's worried that the comments no longer are in his control, ie, on his server.
2) He's worried that because the comments no longer being his server, can not be cached by Google. He wants that Google juice, but when the comments now reside on the disqus.com domain, it's harder to connect the two.
The second one is a biggie. For the power users, they won't like this at all. The blogspot/wordpress.com folks wouldn't care, but the ones that make it their business to blog professionally would.
"... He's worried that because the comments no longer being his server, can not be cached by Google. He wants that Google juice, but when the comments now reside on the disqus.com domain, it's harder to connect the two. ..."
Then suck the comments up via xml or at the api (at some time in future TM) and redisplay your documents. Of course the other alternative is to host your own comments and deal with the associated problems. I guess the pro's should earn their money and deal with the comments with their own tech, time & resources.
For the rest of the world there is always alternatives and this service is looking good because of the "Freedom to Leave". Meaning you can stay because you are free to leave at any time. [0] So if you are a developer "Lock-in is the new Lock-out". The ability to get your data out is a feature of lots of successful services that attracted early adopters.
Hi guys: here's my page. Comment on it, it resides on a separate server.
Hi guys: every week I'm going to update all my pages with an XML file to update the comments that reside on a separate server.
Like I said, the power users will not want to cede as much control or deal with so much bullshit. They want the comments on their server reflected through Google crawl. So Disqus is left with a choice if they choose to pursue the power users, sell it as a plugin and give them the code, or get bought out by WordPress or Moveable Type.
Scripting News is about as power user as you can get. I'm not sure what the Disqus target market is but I don't think it's the power-users that will have the problems as you suggest.
