Every time I get a blog comment, I like to check out what I can about the person (if they are not a regular reader) and what brought them to the blog. Sometimes, someone is responding to a discussion about their company or my comment about their blog post. Even then, it's not straightforward to see what other topics and blogs that reader has commented on and whether their comments are in response to my post or another comment.
This is especially a challenge for the high-traffic blogs I read including well-known blogs like techmeme, Groundswell and HipMojo and corporate blogs inside my company's firewall. Recent posts by executive staff have generated hundreds of comments within a very short time, with repeat comments by prolific bloggers, frequent answers by other bloggers and intersecting conversations that are difficult to follow and may reference a person's comments on other separate blog posts. And that makes reading blog comments a real drag.
Disqus solves many of these challenges. You can check out my first Disqus experiment here with Daniel Ha's quick answer to my question. It's free to develop a Disqus profile and free to add Disqus to your blog. When writing comments, it's easy to track your contributions across Disqus-enabled blogs, develop and build a reputation, and link readers to your social networks and net content. As a blog reader, it's easy to check out a commenter's profile and comments across several blogs and follow conversation threads within comments. As a blogger, it's possible to be more responsive to comments and have better control over comment junk and spam. Disqus is a healthy advance in making comments a more valuable contribution to the blog post and something actually worth reading
Comments