The world of comments on blogs has changed quite a lot just in the past few years. Once the central discussion point for all activity around posts, comments have become distributed, floating to a myriad of social networks and RSS feed readers, while still others are simply retweeting the items they like. The changes were enough to see one comment provider, JS-Kit, say that comments were "dead". Meanwhile, amidst the noise, Disqus has rolled out version 3 of its product today, providing a new, smoother look and feel, and most-importantly for today's Web, real-time updating and greatly improved "reactions" that pull in activity from around the Internet.
Disqus Has Now Split Into Two With Profiles and Comments
In parallel with the company's revamp of its comments engine, Disqus has also added a separate product, called your Profile, which lets users add or delete comments, without impacting the original site, and also presents yet another place to add your third party services, so you can tie all your activities on a post through your profile. Other benefits include a personal URL, such as http://www.disqus.com/louismg for me.
My New Disqus Profile
The New Look of Disqus Comments
Disqus's improvements are coming none too soon. With a great deal of comments taking place elsewhere, as I mentioned with my recent post on Google Reader, and have seen with various sites trying out JS-Kit's Echo platform, the world of comments on the blog has to adapt. I just wonder how the real-time aspect of comments can keep people on the site instead of venturing somewhere else, where they may have established a community. I am looking forward to seeing Disqus 3 play a more connected role to the social ecosystem.