Distributed commenting: Disqus, Echo and IntenseDebate

July 2, 2010 - 10:46am by bmann Tags:

I start a lot of my posts these days with a reblog using Posterous. Thus, a lot of permalinks end up over on my "asides" blog, because a lot of the "comment" activity ends up either over there, or on Twitter.

My particular dual website problem might not be solved by this, but it's clear that keeping track of the discussion around blog posts is very much a distributed issue. Don't even get me started on the "Share with Note" in Google Reader that leaves comments stranded over in Reader where post authors are unlikely to to see them :P

The three big systems that I'm aware of at the moment are Disqus, Echo, and IntenseDebate.

On the Bootup Labs and Bootup Entrepreneurial Society WordPress blogs, I went with IntenseDebate. It's my favourite system mainly because I know the Automattic team and I trust them to do what's right for the web long term. Being part of Automattic also removes the (immediate) need to monetize heavily, so they can focus on features and support.

Disqus is very similar to IntenseDebate. In fact, I think it's great that they were being developed at around the same time, because I think the teams competing against each other spurred development and features. Disqus is VC funded, and so is trying a number of different monetization strategies. They have a paid VIP program, although pricing isn't disclosed.

I found a great compare and contrast blog post between Disqus and IntenseDebate that goes feature by feature. At the time (May 2009), IntenseDebate didn't support Facebook or Twitter logins, although they added them both. I have a hard time telling the two systems apart - any passionate users of either system want to point out killer features (or missing ones)?

Echo is the only system without a free option: you can get a 30 day free trial and then switch to either a $10 or $100 month version. Of course, it is fundamentally a very different system. While they do have "JS Kit" (their former name) accounts, this is very much de-emphasized in favour of only using distributed logins from other systems. As well, it aggregates "comments" from elsewhere - whether the comment is a link on Delicious, Friendfeed, Facebook, etc. etc. This has more in common with Trackbacks, but in the Echo system, it is highly integrated and seems more natural than the other two that are "comments first". Finally, Echo doesn't currently write back to the native comment system, using only a JavaScript plugin. This has implications for SEO, and implications for me really wanting to have my own copy of the comment should the service in the sky "go away" :P

On the Drupal side of things, only Disqus and Echo have plugins available, at http://drupal.org/project/disqus and http://drupal.org/project/jskitcomments respectively. From a technology perspective, I like the real time nature of Echo and the general direction that it is heading -- it's almost like having Friendfeed embedded under each post. But, the JavaScript only plugin and the lack of free option for personal bloggers makes it a no go. Since there currently isn't an IntenseDebate plugin for Drupal, I'm going to go with Disqus for now, even though I would rather support the Automattic team.

UPDATE: I just realized after re-reading the Disqus module description, that it will *import* comments from Drupal, but it does not then write those comments back to the native comment system. So, in Drupal, we have zero options for a distributed comment system that writes back / syncs with native comments.

Lastly, the interesting thing about all these comment systems is that in reality, they are about identity. Rather than using an account on one site, or commenting anonymously, it's about re-using identifiers from widely used systems. Whether it is the commenting profile itself, or a third party like Facebook or Twitter.

Since this is the case, tools like Janrain Engage (Drupal module here) should also be considered if you are trying to "solve" getting more comments, and in particular more authenticated comments.

I'm using it here on this site, and just turned off anonymous commenting to experiment more fully with it. This means it should be easy for you to use the "native" comments, but still allow people to easily login and start commenting. You do have to allow unmoderated account creation on the site you intend to use it.

Comments

Submitted by steve.parks on July 7, 2010 - 10:11am.

A comment on comments

Hi Boris,

Thanks for these reviews, it made interesting reading. Dries has also been blogging about the comments challenge. And TechCrunch have also had some news about LiveFyre's ambitions. So it's been a week for commenting on commenting!

I decided to write up a DrupalRadar article on all the discussion: http://drupalradar.com/future-commenting-drupal

Also, I like the Janrain login method. It'd be very interesting to hear more about your experiences with it.

cheers

Steve

Submitted by bmann on July 7, 2010 - 11:40am.

Nice

Hi Steve -- thanks for the comment and your article: your site looks interesting: subscribed!

I can tell you that LiveFyre will have Drupal integration -- head over to their site to sign up for the beta.

I've sent some comments to Janrain: ideally, they would do a hook form alter on the login / register link so that clicking on it would open their modal dialog, rather than having to do the separate block underneath.

Submitted by Jamie on July 6, 2010 - 10:40am.

I've used Disqus on a few

I've used Disqus on a few sites for the past 18 months and have not had a single problem with them. The Drupal module makes it a snap to start using. I admit I don't use the comment locations that Disqus supports, but rather inject them in my own place on my node template files. That's basically so the comments appear below the node links and everything else. This can all be done in the template layer without any hacking to the module itself, which is a big plus in my book.

Submitted by bmann on July 6, 2010 - 11:09am.

Thanks Jamie

Unfortunately, your comment made me realize that none of these options -- including the Disqus module -- sync / write back comments to the local database. The WordPress plugins do this, so I'd like to have the same functionality in Drupal.

Submitted by Khris on July 5, 2010 - 9:56pm.

Thanks for including

Thanks for including Echo in your review :)

One update for you, Echo was the innovator of synchronizing Comments back to the native CMS (WordPress, Blogger) back in July, 2008, see post here: http://blog.aboutecho.com/2008/07/

Our fellow competitors followed suite ...

Khris, Co-Founder Echo

Submitted by bmann on July 6, 2010 - 9:52am.

Thanks for your comment,

Thanks for your comment, Khris. The fact that you were "first" is not terribly interesting, as all systems are now at feature parity on that point.

Since I'm looking at using these systems within Drupal, Disqus is the only one with a module available that does synchronization instead of just Javascript insertion.

EDIT: my mistake, the Disqus module doesn't do syncing either. Leaving us with exactly zero options for distributed commenting.

Submitted by jennalanger on July 2, 2010 - 3:55pm.

An alternative comment system

Hi Boris, great post. A lot of good info on a topic that is on a lot of bloggers' minds. Here are some of my thoughts:

Thanks for the info on Salmon, it seems like a step in the right direction in line with the semantic web.

I like the idea of linking Facebook and Twitter accounts as it brings more accountability to commenter if it is linked to their profiles. It also makes for an easy login.

Conversations across the web are inherently broken. I agree with you in that they are distributed on several different sites, which makes it hard to have a meaningful discussion.

I work with Livefyre, a new comment system where we are bringing all of the chatter to the original content. It is great when tweets are aggregated about a post, but where's the added value in a retweet? We're importing threads of tweets where people are exchanging their thoughts, not just titles of blog posts. We're also working on bringing in conversations happening on Facebook as well.

Updates on Livefyre happen in real-time as well. Other sites will update the page every minute and dump all of the new messages. Our system pushes all actions over XMPP so comments, likes, and moderation occur instantly for everyone watching. Conversations are also hosted on Livefyre.com and are distributed to users interested in the topics you write about, driving traffic to your blog.

We are opening our private beta on July 14th, and we would love for you to sign up and try Livefyre. It would be great to hear your thoughts on the product, you've obviously messed with a lot of comment systems. If you have any questions feel free to email me at jenna[at]livefyre[dot]com.

Submitted by scott on July 2, 2010 - 1:51pm.

Salmon

Isn't this what Salmon is supposed to fix, eventually?

Submitted by bmann on July 2, 2010 - 2:09pm.

For sure

Yes, Salmon is the first "standard" that can potentially tie these things together (I linked to it in passing in talking about Buzz & the standards it is built on).

But, until there are working implementations and some pressure on these other systems to standardize / interoperate, we have to use other stuff in the meantime. Probably a good opportunity for the Automattic / Intense Debate team to chase.