Disqus This!

Disqus is a new comment/discussion startup debuting today, and quite frankly it is very promising. This logical - enhanced online discussion tool allows blogs, websites and visitors to benefit from comments and relevant discussions in several ways. Disqus allows site owners to create custom discussion forums interfaced with a comments aspect for blogs and websites. The service can be utilized as a stand alone forum or as a companion to the comments tools. Disqus founder Daniel Ha told me that their development is really more a micro-blogging system than a comments tool or forum - this is the way I viewed the service as well.

Feature Upon Feature

Comments and forums interfacing together provide a more rewarding, meaningful and effective interaction between blogs/sites and users/visitors. The service's notifications of responses to threads and their resident automated forum updates bring new functionality to blogs . Every commenter (registered or not) has a viewable profile showing their comments across the network, and simply replying to an email automatically posts a comment response. Combining current and coming customization features - Disqus has effectively created the next phase of blog interaction. Disqus also displays Facebook and Twitter qualities that are interesting, and with some refinement this will also be a big asset for users. It is fun to watch developers learn and integrate things that people like, and Disqus is evidently on that path. 

Disqus Comments showing voting, rating and depth

Dashboard

Disqus allows for control over comments and forums via a simple but powerful dashboard. This includes in depth control and integration settings, forum settings and access controls that are right at the user's fingertips. Disqus users can currently select from 3 comment system themes (with more to come) - define avatar displays, pagination, posts per page and sorting among other features. The forum settings only include one theme so far, but users can define options, categories, the sidebar, colors and images, fonts or even edit CSS from this tab. Even as a stand alone forum service Disqus is a simple and powerful tool for discussion.

Several of my close blogging friends have been talking about backing enhanced comments with a discussion forum. Disqus does this rather flawlessly and with simple discoverability and tools as well. Many people say that the forum is dead - yet I would wager that there are more comment strings on forums right now than on blogs. The forum sector has been in need of a face-lift for some time and Disqus could remedy this and the one dimensional nature of comments too.

Pros

Disqus is easily integrated with WordPress, Blogger, TypePad and Movable Type and easily embeddable on other sites. Their front page essentially shows the most discussed topics in their network, which allows people to discover new content. This feature has rather obvious potential for people looking for hot topics or great discussions. Disqus is also simple to set up - just create a forum and integrate it to your blog or site. The service effectively doubles any site's exposure by residing both on the parent blog and on the user's Disqus' forum. An open API, profiles, voting, customization, auto posting, spam control and other features really round out a great tool for rich content enhancement and user value.

Cons

As with any new release Disqus is somewhat short on themes, and I am sure there will be some bugs to iron out. Beyond limited selections in some areas, there is not a lot wrong with this well thought out service. Disqus founder Daniel Ha told me most of these types of issues along with adding a user's own domain for their forums are right around the corner. Like many startups we write about - getting people to discover what it can actually do will be the service's biggest hurdle. 

Disqus founder - part of the story

Conclusion

Disqus is the best example so far of next generation textual interaction between readers/visitors. Some blogs have already veered away from straight comments and added a "back end" to their discussions. Disqus takes users there in one step with no pain - this will be a big plus with many bloggers. As far as SEO and visitor retention, the benefits should be fairly obvious, and to be honest this is why most blogs will have these elements in the near future. Disqus goes one "forum" farther than JS-Kit, a great widget I reviewed earlier this month. I think we will continue to see refinements in the way people discuss and impart information over the next year - in a way these elements have lagged behind others until lately.