It had to happen. do i am surprised?. no because i was the one talking on and on that Sez Who only out  was to be acquired by JS-KIT or Disqus. back when IntenseDebate was not part of Automattic it was also the way to end any chance of any other competitor to ever touch them. They now have to worry about Automattic, Facebook and more than surely Google coming with something in this space now that Facebook has got into this too.

Fortunately for JS-KIT this acquisition and the accumulation of deals and talent puts them into the position to be able to fight Google, Facebook and Automattic and hold on the space since they are the true experts of the space with lots of history on the market.

So far in terms of acquisition JS-KIT acquired the old Haloscan and Sez Who. the first served trackbacks and alternative comment systems and Sez Who serves commenter reputation and Identification. both are good complements but i think that the missing link now is actual comment tracking and harvesting tech. that sounds like Cocomment. they already got a deal with them but with the recent fallout of Cocomment last competitors (co.mments and Commentful) as one has gone off and the other has stagnated and its also dying. Cocoment is a great opportunity to expand the tech and talent in order to anticipate possible threats like backtype that is a new kind of Comment tracker and harvester. the reason is because disqus could be looking into that too since it is pretty much their only chance they have to not be overwhelmed by the now very strong competition competition in this space. i see it hard for them to survive on their own unless they have one last ace to show.

The Sez Who acquisition surely will help JS-KIT to compete but it will still have to fight for the first place. i think a Cocomment acquisition would make sure they get the first spot as the combination of talent and tech should allow them to evolve their services faster and grow at a faster pace.

But now i also wonder about a possible brand name change and image revamp as they are not longer just JS-KIT’s anymore.

I’m very pleased to share with you that JS-Kit has acquired SezWho.

Here are the highlights

JS-Kit continues its meteoric rise as the largest distributed social network by acquiring competitor SezWho.

Given the adverse funding market, SezWho has been unable to raise the capital needed to continue operations.  As a result the service will shut down.

The founders have arranged, through JS-Kit, the resources necessary to continue the service for an additional 30 days.  This will give publishers an opportunity to transition JS-Kit’s complimentary Comments solution or make other arrangements.

All new customers will automatically receive JS-Kit Comments.

This adds 30,000 registered sites to JS-Kit’s customer base.

This follows our acquisition of Haloscan last year (see TechCrunch) as well as the first implementations of Facebook Connect, OpenID 2.0 and Yahoo ID.

JS-Kit is also winning big business with customers that traditionally work with more expensive alternatives Pluck, KickApps and BazaarVoice. Deals like those with Sun Microsystems, JetBlue, WorldNow and Evite continue to surprise the market.

Our clear and simple business model is a key point of differentiation. Khris Loux’s post about ‘the cost of free widgets‘ explains the value of a partner who has a revenue model. We offer Free, PRO, & PRO+ subscriptions in order to lock in revenue and assure continuation of services for customers.

From our friend Jitendra Gupta, CEO of SezWho

I am excited to be working with JS-Kit to ensure our customers have the best possible support and technologies moving forward. Thanks to their support, we have been able to continue operations for an extra 30 days and provide users a clear upgrade path for rating and comment technologies.

About JS-Kit

JS-Kit is the world’s largest distributed social network, connecting over 630,000 publishers with light weight, cross domain services, including Comments, Ratings, and Polls. These community building services are easy to install, simple to customize, and support fine grained administrative controls.  Publishers can save in-house development and join a network of sites which include AOL, Evite, Experian, JetBlue, Sun Microsystems, & WorldNow by simply embedding a few lines of HTML.

JS-KIT

Via JS-KIT and Techcrunch