thegeniusfiles is usingto claim and manage comments all over the web.
New technologies such URL shortening services, Facebook Connect, Twitter, OAuth, etc. are beginning to reduce the importance of the top-level domain as a statement of one’s Web identity. Many of us have very fragmented online identities scattered across various social networks, blog comments, etc. A new trend is emerging in the form of online identity: a move to aggregate these fragments from across the Web into one central place where they can be organized and tracked.
Disqus is one of my favorite identity aggregators. It’s used on many popular blogs such as Mashable, and it integrates with a number of other identity services like Twitter and Facebook. While Disqus could learn a few things from the way FriendFeed organizes content, in terms of blog comments Disqus is much more integrated and ubiquitous.
The Posterous team has done a terrific job implementing the Posterous Comments feature. I love the functionality and the email integration. Posterous is superb at pushing content out into the wider Web. But what Posterous lacks is the ability to pull in content from around the Web. Disqus, however focuses on pulling in content.
That’s why I think that Posterous should integrate Disqus into its comment functionality. I think that such a move would also drive traffic to Posterous, because every Disqus comment links back to the source. What do you think?
I agree, and I’d like the ability to use either Disqus or IntenseDebate comments with my blog. I used to do just this when I was using Tumblr as my platform. I think this might be possible in the near future when Posterous unveils CSS editing (Sachin has said it’s coming within a few weeks). I’m looking forward to possibly being able to adding more advanced (and threaded) comments to my Posterous blog.
We like Disqus and understand the value that it adds for you as a blog owner.But I don’t think Disqus support really meshes well with the vision of Posterous.com as it stands today. The whole point of Posterous is to be a great experience out of the box, like an Apple product. Apple didn’t contract out the Mail application to Google or the iChat application to AIM. They build everything so it’s all unified and consistent.Adding support for Disqus would create an inconsistency in the Posterous experience. Users would visit different sites and see different commenting options. The external comment systems wouldn’t look native, and wouldn’t behave the same. For example, comments on another platform wouldn’t respect the email preferences we have on your Posterous manage page.This is one of those cases where we need to cater for 80% of the population and make decisions for mass appeal. See:http://sachin.posterous.com/when-youre-building-a-company-you-sometimes-hI can imagine having an option for Disqus in the future in a pro version, a situation really meant for our high end users who don’t want any Posterous branding on their site, users who are creating a site separate from Posterous itself.But for person sites, it doesn’t seem like a great fit.
Posterous crew are my boys. We’d love to get Disqus available on here, but only where it makes sense for this community. I think flexibility for more advanced users is a good fit.
Hmm… To me it doesn’t seem all that different than allowing users to choose between various auto-posting options. It would be just one more option. It would depend in part on how well it blends with the Posterous look, but that should be a fairly minor detail.Regarding a paid subscription model, I think perhaps your best selling point might be to offer a more granular analytic service than what Google Analytics provides. I am very intrigued by the wide discrepency between Posterous-reported page views and Google-reported page views. My 2¢.– Sent from my Palm Pre
During one of speaking appearances, someone commented that they found the majority of people won’t comment unless Disqus is enabled. For those of us using Posterous as a lifestream platform, people from all over are viewing are content – however what I would really like is for them to comment on content I’ve spent time selecting and posting.At least have it as an option – and leave it to the individual to decide.
I find the biggest weakness in the comment system is that I can’t reply to people, so when someone leaves a comment all I can do is leave another comment that is not attached to the original comment.Disqus would pick up the slack on that, I’ve seen Tumblr sites with Disqus comments and I would have thought them to be the direct competition to Posterous?
It’s been awhile since I had enough comments to do a thorough comparison! About halfway through the semester my blogging productivity really craters
– Sent from my Palm Pre
I agree. Disqus also has the added advantage of posting said comment across the ‘net: it tweets, posts to facebook, yahoo, myspace, misc. social sites and shoots emails to all discussion participants all on your behalf. Plus since most people are logged into their favorite social site when they browse, the OAuth login process usually goes unnoticed; most people can just start typing without doing anything
In fairness, I understand what you are trying to achieve. I know how it looks and how it feels. When browsing a community service, for example Tumblr, and come across a blog with a different comment system, there is a “disconnection”. The “consistency” (as you have said) is gone, lost.But there are solutions to every problem. My solution is this: add Disqus below the native Posterous comment system.Now it will be weird to see two input boxes, right? Then make the Disqus system load up in “collapsed” mode, say: “If you have a Disqus account, click here to comment.”There is no need to remove the native comment system. Consistency is retained, users who wants a Comment-Defragmentation / Comments 2.0 system will also be happy. Win-Win!How about that sir?Check out what I did with my Tumblr blog: http://snowworld.tumblr.com/post/347139164/guillee-im-done-star-wars-opening-…I retained the “Notes” feature. Originally, once a Tumblr user enables Disqus, the comments and notes disappear. Yes, I admit, I am an advanced user, but it doesn’t mean a user must be “pro” to do these things.I can create a How-To Guide, which I did for BloggerXML+Disqus and BloggerClassic+Disqus, to this day I am getting support questions (and I don’t even work for Disqus!)It just so happen that I am an advance user. But the majority out there using Disqus, IntenseDebate, or JS-Kit are not. They just used automated tools, asked their friends, or followed a step-by-step guide.So I disagree that the use of a Comment-Defragmentation / Comments 2.0 system is a “pro” user need or feature. And as everybody said, more and more people are refusing to leave comments if it isn’t using these third-party services.We do not have any figures but I believe that we are slowly becoming that “mass appeal”, and those that don’t use these services are becoming the “original user base”.Anyway, that’s my offer for a Win-Win solution. Now time to re-explore Posterous, I know I can find a use for the service without worrying too much about the no-Disqus ‘disadvantage’ ;p
I completely agree re the connecting value of Disqus. Thank you for this post. This is exactly what I wanted to say. I love posterous but it I think Disqus would integrate it for a lot better than it is.I have another blog on blogger that I have plugged Disqus into and I would like to abandon it for personal posts and use posterous instead. Because I have Disqus on my other blog and not on posterous, this has become a difficult decision to make. Disqus has become that important to me.
I want Disqus in my posterous too. It seems like a good fit to me.
I think that the major Disqus advantage in my case is the possibility to bring in comments to my Posterous blog. My blog is tightly integrated with facebook and twitter, thanks to the autopost features of Posterous. Now it happens that my readers love to read articles on Posterous and commenting and liking them on Facebook. Disqus could be a way to “share” such comments back on my Posterous blog.
I like Disqus a lot and hope you do eventually put it on the roadmap for integration. I agree your trying to make something that will work out of the box so you should have the out of the box commenting system. But doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be able to opt out to Disqus comments. Plus your both in the YC family
I like Disqus and use it in my blog http://www.go2linux.org .. but for my posterous http://g.garron.me I think the posterous comment system is just OKPosterous guys you really rock, off course having the option as a pro version is a great idea.
I understand where Sachin is coming from about the easy experience that Posterous provides but I want add my +1 for adding the option of Disqus comments on a pro version.
Disqus could be integrated as an optional add-on that people must opt-in to use. Posterous comments seems good enough for basic feedback to posts. I’ve had experiences with Disqus in another blog host, and it’s slow and buggy. I’ve also tried Intense Debate and TypePad Connect. There is value with third party comment systems, but it shouldn’t be on by default.
I’d like to add my support to the idea of Disqus integrated into Posterous. It’s one of the tempting features of tumblr.
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In every single way, Posterous is better than what I’m using except one. It’s bookmarklet is great, it has a great themeing system, etc.But it doesn’t support Disqus, and it doesn’t seem to have a way to pull all comments for a blog into RSS, so I dumped it and went to Tumblr.
I also want Disqus comments.
I have pretty well given up on the idea that Posterous will ever integrate Disqus comments. At this point, I’m okay with that. I am moving toward self-hosted WordPress for my blogs going forward – because my skills have grown to the point where I believe that I can make effective use of the extra control and flexibility. That said, Posterous has been good for me. It’s truly a great product and I continue to recommend it to a lot of people. I think Posterous has stayed true to its core values of simplicity and versatility. Posterous doesn’t need to be WordPress, because WordPress is already doing a kickass job at being WordPress.As far as the Posterous vs Tumblr debate is concerned, I don’t see much to get excited about. They are both great services. I think there’s room for both to grow, without stepping on each other. There is still a huge, untapped audience that has never been served. Pull from that!
Depressing, but understandable.Personally, I like parts of Posterous better than I like WordPress. I could probably use Posterous completely without Disqus if it implemented just a couple of extra features, but they didn’t seem to be interested in them. (RSS Feed for all comments is the biggest one, more login providers for comments is the next biggest.) Posterous’ bookmarklet really slays anything else out there, and I’m sad that I won’t really be able to use it because of those couple of limitations.