Brian Grey Blog

Thanks to my Polaris pal VC Mike, I took some time kicking tires on Disqus this evening. (Why Disqus when their competitor Intense Debate was just acquired by Polaris backed Automattic?…well, first off, ID is off limits for time being as they work on migrating to the Automattic platform, and second, I always endorse kicking tires on the competitor to make sure I know what they’re up to!)

Like most new digital media applications, the best way to get a good feel for what they’re all about is to take them for a spin.

At first I got a bit bogged down thinking of the service from a publisher’s perspective only — “yet another admin dashboard for me to manage, another plug-in for me to stick in to my hosted WP blog software!”. True, I’m not exactly sure what the huge benefits are going to be vis a vis my current blog?

But what does jump out as a valuable is the consumer or “user” experience. With my profile set up on disqus.com I can now see all of my commenting history across all blogs (at least those that employ disqus). You can easily see how an average user who may not have the desire to start their own blog can essentially create a running commentary across multiple topics for other users to track and then comment on via a tool like Disqus.

Check out my disqus feed here.

As an avid WP user, I have submitted a request to be able to tap in to Intense Debate now that they have been aquired by Automattic.