Resource:
Disqus
- Links: Website | Facebook | Twitter | Blog | Crunch Base
- Tags: Audience Engagement, Online Conversations, Online Tools, Technology
With a few quick steps, you can turn your old comment system into a new way to engage your visitors. From small blogs to massive websites, Disqus is [an easy way] to build active communities. It’s free to use and works with virtually any type of website.” Source: Disqus
Disqus looks to make it very easy and rewarding for people to interact on websites using its system. Commenters can build reputation and carry their contributions from one website to the next. Using the Disqus’ built-in network effects, bloggers and publishers can expect a higher volume and higher quality of conversations by using the comment system.” Source: Crunch Base
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Topics: Resources Technology
Web Content Manager at Journalism Accelerator
To everyone, we’re wrapping up the live Q&A now, but feel free to post additional questions or comments. The live portion is over, but the conversation will continue. Ro’s going to check back later this week and answer any other questions we might have for him.
Ro, thank you for responding to our questions about Disqus and online conversation.
We’ll be continuing our Q&A series in about two weeks. Be sure to check the JA’s twitter or facebook for notifications about upcoming events. Thanks again, Ro!
work @disqus; root @eagles, @phillies
Thanks, Jamie and thanks everyone on JA for the good questions.
Feel free to get in touch with any other suggestions as we continue to do our part in hopefully making online discussion communities better: http://disqus.com/twitter, http://blog.disqus.com, hello@disqus.com.
How is Disqus’ spam comment detection? I have not been happy with askimet on my wordpress sites.
work @disqus; root @eagles, @phillies
It’s great! But don’t take my word for it — try out the WP plugin http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/disqus-comment-system/ and see if you agree. FYI, you can also still use Akismet on top of Disqus’ anti-spam if you wish — it’s an optional setting in our admin panel.
Primed Associates; trusted advisor; social orienteer; innovation-capable cultures; whole systems designer; road cycling nut; multi-continent East Coaster
One of the questions I hear is the value of a comment system in building community. Many small sites struggle with traffic. In order to maximize the value of a comment system like Disqus is it necessary to have a community to start? If not, why not? And if so, what’s the critical mass to keep things going?
work @disqus; root @eagles, @phillies
Hey Andrew – yeah the ‘cold start’ problem is a common one. And even though we are a software company, I still believe that software is only 50% at maximum of the equation. The rest is up to the site managers to have great content, commit to building a great community by being present both in their own comment discussion and others around the web (in a non-spammy way of course) and set the tone upfront and often about what the norms are (per an earlier comment I made).
Nonetheless, I do believe Disqus gives you a big leg up, not just because of all the features, but mainly because of the fact that it’s the largest commenting platform on the web and is interconnected, so it makes it much easier for your site and your content to be discovered by the other hundreds of millions of users who use Disqus every month. In fact in the new Disqus, even more discovery and cross-pollination is a big area of focus as you’ll start to see more of on our blog (http://blog.disqus.com).
Web Content Manager at Journalism Accelerator
While we’re on the topic of building from scratch – what’s it take to get Disqus up and running? Is it something anyone can implement on their personal blog, or is it more suited for companies with a dedicated development team? On average, would you say it takes a day? a week? a month?
work @disqus; root @eagles, @phillies
For most, it would take just minutes. Often there are handy plugins (e.g. for WordPress), or an easy way to enter your Disqus site ID and have it automatically pull Disqus in (e.g. in Tumblr) … but in all cases you can just paste in a few lines of our universal JavaScript. I could probably do it right now in about 90 seconds if you timed me ☺.
There are of course more sophisticated implementations, e.g. integrating your own registration system, creating custom widgets, etc. but even those are fairly straightforward and can be done whenever convenient vs. all upfront, and usually in a matter of days. Some of those deeper integration capabilities are part of our premium add-ons or our VIP service for larger sites (http://disqus.com/for-websites/vip), but most of the core features are and always will be free, including all of those that we’ve talked about in this Q&A.
Maker of Bespoke WordPress Websites
Hi Ro, I’ve recently read about people who had Disqus running on their websites (I believe WordPress-based) and then decided to return to the native comment system. Their basic reason seemed to be an issue of control related to User Interface and design. I have 2 questions. 1. How much control do users of Disqus have over what comment-related content is displayed? (avatars, etc) And 2. How much visual control (CSS/skinning) can we use to make it look how we want?
work @disqus; root @eagles, @phillies
Hi, Bert. The new Disqus was designed to address issues we saw with the older version where conflicting CSS or custom code in the theme editing tools would often conflict with a certain page element, break certain features and/or confuse users. So the new version uses an iframe approach, partly to address these issues and UX consistency reasons, but to capture a number of benefits having to do with security, SEO and performance.
The research we did showed that admins wanted look and feel continuity but wanted to do less work to achieve it, so we instead designed the adaptive iframe to auto-inherit components of the page, e.g. dark vs. light palettes, link colors, fonts, etc. The HTML5 design also tends to render a lot better on mobile and tablet than the older, stripped down mobile theme, and is more or less at feature parity with the desktop experience (another thing we heard that users have come to expect these days).
(tbc…)
work @disqus; root @eagles, @phillies
…That said, we are building in more admin controls for added configurability. And indeed on example of that is we recently added more flexibility to the way our ‘Discovery Box’ (i.e. related links) is shown or removed.
We’ll continue listening to feedback and add more configurability as appropriate. Please feel free to send us your thoughts at hello@disqus.com.
Maker of Bespoke WordPress Websites
Thanks Ro. Helps to know that Disqus is trying to build “intelligence” into service to try and help adapt. And its good to know you’re receptive to feedback and input. Perhaps its buried in “advanced options” for those that want it, but I think the more you allow people the ability to customize the “content and presentation” of Disqus you may find it addresses a large segment of site owners and developers hesitancy to use the service on their websites.
Web Content Manager at Journalism Accelerator
For members of our community, creating and augmenting streams of revenue is a high priority. Can you elaborate on how a comment system might drive revenue? Do you have specific examples or case studies that you can share?
work @disqus; root @eagles, @phillies
Sure.
There are a number of indirect ways. For example our data shows on average sites see substantially higher participation which correlates to higher time spent and page views per visit (2011 study: http://disqus.com/research/strong-communities-grow-traffic/; 2012 study showed in even bigger increase with the new Disqus: http://disqus.com/research/time/). For many sites, more page views means more advertising inventory. For others, more commenters means more registered users who are often the ones most likely to opt in to a paid service or product/event of some kind that the site may offer.
More recently, though, we were excited to launch Disqus Promoted Discovery, which for the first time allows publishers to directly monetize their commenting communities and in a native way as opposed to just throwing AdSense or banner ads into the comment thread. More info on that optional program is here: http://help.disqus.com/customer/portal/articles/666278-introducing-promoted-discovery-and-f-a-q- for those interested. It’s an extension of the organic discovery features we’ve been continuing to build in to syndicate our publishers’ content links and drive more traffic to them.