Is Disqus worth it?

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Sweta SenGupta on February 10, 2011 at 12:27am

I have disqus on my Blogger blog-I implemented it because of the obvious lack in the Blogger commenting system-threaded conversations,trackbacks,ability to log in from other social networks  etc.If these are your priorities,then you can switch to Disqus.Disqus also syncs your native comments with it self so that even when you uninstall it,your comments are not eaten into the techwhirl.

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Permalink Reply by Nathan Miller on February 10, 2011 at 1:22pm

Sure, but does it keep future (ie post-Disqus) comments native as well? That is, what happens if Disqus disappears, will my comments disappear into a non-existent cloud as well?

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Permalink Reply by DShan on February 10, 2011 at 12:59am

Highly recommend. The only competitor I've seen worth mentioning is LiveFyre, a company that's partnered with 20SB in the past, but the simple answer is that everyone should ditch their WP comment system. Comments are conversation, and these newer platforms make it easier to have a conversation. Email replies are one example, the threading and engagement actions they provide are others. 

I honestly think commenting is an unsolved activity on the web. I'm excited that LiveFyre wants to bring tweets and facebook updates into our comment streams. I'm upset they don't have email replies yet...it really matter to me (and I've told them that). I like what Disqus did with their new dashboard, but I don't see myself going there to check it out often.

So yeah. Disqus is a good option and you can pull all your old comments in, so there's no harm in trying it out. 

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Permalink Reply by Nathan Miller on February 10, 2011 at 1:20pm

Wait, so you can respond to a comment via email? Can anyone do this, or just the blog owner? Does it thread the responses properly?

 

Two concerns I've had are with spam (it seems that Disqus enables more of it - I currently use Akismet and Captcha, the latter of which I'm considering disabling), and with owner-editing, which is a feature I use when someone misspells a word due to fast typing (I figure it's easier to just correct the record than make the person feel like an idiot). Is this possible with Disqus?

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Permalink Reply by DShan on February 10, 2011 at 2:40pm

You and your readers can comment via email...for readers they can 'follow' the comments to reply via email and if someone replies to your comment on my blog, you'll get an email and can reply to that email to respond.  Fully threaded.

You can take your comments when you leave Disqus. I'm testing LiveFyre but could swap back to Disqus or WP if I wanted and I wouldn't lose anything.

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Permalink Reply by Nathan Miller on February 10, 2011 at 4:16pm

And what about the issues of spam and owner-editing?

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Permalink Reply by nicopolitan on February 11, 2011 at 4:05pm

I'm pretty sure the moderation option is there, as in it'll check an email address against who you've already approved and will hold all new ones back for your approval. Spam isn't a bad problem with what I'm seeing currently, if that helps.

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Permalink Reply by nicopolitan on February 10, 2011 at 1:32am

From someone who's used Disqus on my own self-hosting service, I enjoyed it fine, but I've actually heard some complaints from readers about how wonky it was at the time.  This was a year ago so it's probably improved since, but I've since taken it down. 

 

Default does okay for me (sorry, DShan :P), but there's still a lot to be desired. I haven't found my answer yet so I'm still using the default. I haven't tried Livefyre yet, but it's in beta and I can stand to wait until v1 stable release to give it a shot. In the meantime, default it is.   

[...]

Actually I just took a look at the Disqus site and holy balls has it changed since I used it. I'm going to take it for a spin and see what the response is.  

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Permalink Reply by Vida Crystal on February 10, 2011 at 4:45am

I know that it isn't necessarily helpful when someone says "I agree with..." but I do agree with Sweta and DShan. For me the biggest pros were: threads, email notification (grouped together multiple times a day), tracking, social networks, customization with how much socializing you actually want integrated (reactions, for example). The pitfalls, in my opinion, are: I haven't yet found a way to make sure I reply to each comment that works for me. Of course you can reply to each one from your email, but I like the ability to see my post for some reason, so I end up going to that one anyway. You could also moderate from your Disqus dashboard, but once you reply to the comments and come back to the page, all your comments are at the top because it sorts by recent. Slightly annoying and I'm hoping I'm just using it wrong. Also, when people log in as guests and don't leave any info about themselves, only I can see their personal e-mail in my inbox, so it leaves others wondering who that person is. But overall it's definitely worth the convo it strikes up and it's just much nicer aesthetically I think. I may be completely lost when using it since I've only recently implemented the change on my blogger blogs (so feel free to let me know, people!) but this is my experience with it. Hope this helps!

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Permalink Reply by Nathan Miller on February 10, 2011 at 1:21pm

I'm not convinced of the benefits of social network integration. I realize it's the hot topic du jour, but why is it any better than regular commenting, and more importantly, how does it actually play out?

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Permalink Reply by DShan on February 10, 2011 at 2:53pm

75% of the conversation around my blog posts, and most blog posts, really, is happening on twitter or facebook. Convo encourages more convo/input. It plays out in your comment stream...pulling in the external references.

Social platforms aren't a topic du jour. They're where conversations online happen now.

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Permalink Reply by Jenna Langer on February 10, 2011 at 4:46pm

Hey Nathan, Jenna from Livefyre here. I'm obviously for 3rd party comment platforms, but Derek brings up good points. People are having the conversation on Twitter and Facebook, but that doesn't often translate to comments on a blog. We're building some advanced social media integrations to capture the conversation that's happening away from your site to bring it to your content.

In addition, the standard WordPress comments doesn't encourage interaction or repeat visitors. Readers will leave a comment and never come back. Using Livefyre adds in email notifications, the ability to tag friends from Facebook and Twitter, and real-time updates of comments. All of these features increase engagement and create an actual conversation around your content, not just fly-by comments.

If you'd like to try Livefyre you can sign up for our private beta at http://livefyre.com and I'll make sure you get an invite. We import all of your old comments and write new ones back to the WordPress database so you will still own all of your data. Feel free to send any other questions my way - jenna at livefyre dot com.

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