Posts Tagged ‘disqus’

JS-KIT Rages On With A $3.6M Funding Round

October 15th, 2008

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Because a good war is fought to the end. and the Second Commentosphere War is no exception.  The announcement of Wordpress acquiring Intense Debate to integrate it blogging platform and to offer it as a service was a big hit for JS-KIT and Disqus. but while JS-KIT will be affected. they have the upper hand because they offer support beyond Blog Platforms and they got the best Blogger.com integration where the big numbers are in term of users and also because they got other Widget Services too beyond its Social Commenting System. Disqus response was that they would not be affected (which is of course a lie PR spin since their previous releases clearly pointed their aspirations of growth to Wordpress by giving it preference) and they quickly  followed by releasing an API in an attempt to search for the growth they need and to see what new opportunities can come up from it.   but JS-KIT raged on and in what way. they added a partnership with ShareThis for cross promotion of each other. this is of course a response from ShareThis to Clearspring acquisition of AddThis that in turn was Clearspring response to ShareThis acquisition of Madkast (puff!)

But now it is the turn for JS-KIT to assure confidence that the announcement of Wordpress and Intense Debate does not affect them at all. what better way to do it, that with a Funding round of $3.6M ?.

Their Bullet points:

JS-Kit is a leading provider of lightweight social widgets with over 550,000 registered sites using it’s hosted offerings, which include:Comments, Ratings, Product Reviews, & Polls.
The services are easy for publishers to install, simple to customize, and are an extremely low cost alternative to in-house development.
Web publishers seeking stability now have a "safe choice" for Web 2.0 services.
Funding has already enabled expansion of the development team to a dozen engineers, a quadrupling of the size of the data center, and the addition of industry visionary Chris Saad (Co-Founder DataPortability) as a Strategic Advisor.
Series B funding was led by Altos Ventures, with participation from Series A Investor TEF3.
Contact: khris@js-kit.com.

I also have to note that they don`t only announced this founding round. but announcing that Chris Saad will join them as Strategic Advisor indicated how they will be spending that money since Chris talks about what needs to change on JS-KIT to make it better in his own post about JS-KIT

JS-KIT

via JS-KIT blog (Go there for the Full Details)

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Posted in Tools, Web 2.0

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IntenseDebate acquired by Automattic

September 26th, 2008

The second commentosphere wars heats up with a plot twist. IntenseDebate. an alternative comment system for blogs that competes with Disqus, SezWho and JS-KIT got acquired by Automattic. the company behind Wordpress, Buddypress and Akismet. the argument behind the acquisition was pinpointed to the similar backend  Wordpress and IntenseDebate got according to Matt Mullenweg.

While there is no doubt that it is true. i am also sure that the other main reason had to be the price. Intensedebate had no chance to catching up to Disqus and JS-KIT that are now in a competition war with one another. JS-KIT maintains the lead followed by a Disqus that counts with good founding and a good team along some pretty high profile blogs using their software. I.D being acquired by Automattic changes everything for Disqus and is a serious threat in the short term  for them. but more to Disqus than to JS-KIT. this is because Disqus main focus up to now is Wordpress. JS-KIT supports pretty much everything and were more interested in Blogger.com and Blog Networks because that is where the big numbers are. this sudden move proves them right. IntenseDebate will find its way into Wordpress from version 2.7 and on. there is no news right now that indicates how the level of integration and support will vary or if it will vary from the features they got now. but it is some serious bad news for Disqus and SezWho in the Wordpress front because users will not have a reason to change the default comment system for other.

Wordpress 2.7 is the stepping stone that paves way to 3.0. a version that is said will be the slayer of Six Apart and will aim to dethrone Blogger.com. quite high goals but a radical change for the comment system is a great selling point to gain more adepts. this move will be also dangerous in the long run if it finally manages that Blogger.com and the other main Blog Platforms finally update their pretty outdates comment systems. that to this day remains to be Blogger.com weakest point.

This also leaves SezWho in a odd spot. i wish someone will recognize the opportunity and acquires them next. that could be anybody. from Google to Six Apart or maybe Disqus or JS-KIT.

Overall a great thing. Default Blog Comment Systems are seriously lacking and they have been that way for years. this move by Wordpress should shake things up for the greater good.

IntenseDebate

via TC

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Posted in Misc

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Disqus 2.0: Comments back up, more SEO, new look and more Wordpress integration

August 22nd, 2008

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This was one of those post that slipped through the cracks. but better late than too late.10 days ago Disqus released version 2.0 of their Wordpress Plugin. this offers a better integration for Wordpress users than any other Social Commenting System (or alternate, if you will) for Wordpress blogs. they have highlighted the following changes:

WordPress Plugin 2.0

We’ve been working on improving integration with platforms. Available now, the new WordPress-Disqus plugin 2.0 features the following:

  • Comments are indexable by search engines (SEO-friendly)
  • Export and import of comments
  • Automatic synchronization between Disqus.com and your WordPress comments
  • Uses the new Disqus API
  • Moderate/administer your blog right from the WordPress admin

This update makes it easier than ever to try Disqus out.

Note about import: Comments imported into Disqus will be initially unclaimed. People can merge these comments with their Disqus profiles simply by claiming the comments.

The WordPress plugin is just one of the first uses of our new, revamped APIs, which we built to open Disqus up to developers. There are currently some developers using our API for custom integrations or connecting web applications with the Disqus network. We are still polishing up our public documentation, but they will be available soon.

Faster

Disqus now has a new look. The look itself isn’t faster — it’s accessing your stuff that is now speedier. The entire interface was retooled to improve how you use Disqus. Not only is using Disqus faster, we’ve worked on making the entire service quicker. We know many people trust our service to be fast and reliable so we spent some time making sure we’re delivering on this.

The New Homepage for Commenters

The new Disqus homepage is completely focused on you, the commenter. From the homepage, you are able to view your and friends’ comments, track replies, and manage everything from a single interface.

Adding and Following Friends

Following people’s comments has been improved. On someone’s profile, click “Follow”. You can view view all of your friends’ comments by toggling the button on the homepage.

Easier

New Admin Interface for Bloggers

Publishers, bloggers, or website owners have a hard job. The new Admin interface makes it much easier to moderate commenters and administer settings. We feel that the new Disqus.com is much more useful; we hope you take a look around and will agree with us.

Comment Blogs

Disqus also has new profiles for commenters. While familiar, the new profiles have one big difference: we’re treating them as comment-blogs. Many people don’t have a blog, but comment regularly all over the place. A comment blog is their place to collect and show off their thoughts. We have big plans for this, including customization.

Note that the changes are only Wordpress specific. there is no mention of Blogger or other platform. the changes are pretty much a step up over JS-KIT in the case of Wordpress. there is also the fact that Disqus provides Specific support for 2 more Blog Platforms than JS-KIT. but in terms of Blogger support JS-KIT got a better integration. logical considering Blogger is where the big numbers are. Disqus upgrade is still a huge step up against the two minor players in the Social Commenting Systems and in the Commentosphere Second War against Disqus. a war that started with JS-KIT acquiring Haloscan and that continues via Savvy Marketing and Big Partnerships from JS-KIT. but SEO friendly comments, Comments back up and synchronization come a long way and now it will be time for JS-KIT to answer back and escalate things even further to the benefit of everyone. Meanwhile the other players like Intense Debate and SezWho prepare something up or just await to see what happens while trying to not lag behind too much.

DISQUS

via Disqus blog

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Posted in Tools, Web 2.0

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The JS-KIT vs DISQUS war continues. savvy social marketing from JS-KIT ensues

August 8th, 2008

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I told you it was war. i also told you that such a war will be DISQUS versus JS-KIT. Disqus is already known for their savvy Social Marketing using twitter and pretty much any other way they can use in order to resolve complains from Disqus users, will to be users or even testers. that is a defensive line of fire. you defend the brand by blocking attacks to your PR front in order to protect the fort. that war analogy works perfectly right when JS-KIT enters into the picture and then goes into the mission of turning Disqus new users or will to be users into JS-KIT users instead using the same ways disqus uses to protect themselves. this is a offensive move. a great marketing move.

In resume. JS-KIT is not showing calm against Disqus even considering that they are now at least twice as big as Disqus thanks to the haloscan acquisition and their latest big partnerships. that is good. nothing worse than a boring brand war when it could easily be more entertaining. but as i said before. the only way to end this war quick for either JS-KIT or Disqus is acquiring SezWho or Intense Debate, maybe even both in the case of disqus since JS-KIT would only need one of them to beat disqus for good in a very short run and disqus would need both to beat JS-KIT for good in the long run. otherwise. the second war for the  commentosphere is meant to go on. the big winner is of course the consumer as this will drive up the innovation in that space.

For more on this story, go to the link below:

Is it Spamming or Savvy Marketing? via mashable.

I of course think that it is savvy marketing and that it is impossible for it to be classified as spam considering that it was done in public. that would be like doing a fit and cry because someone in the street handed you a flyer.

 

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Posted in Web 2.0, Widget Marketing

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