The Commentosphere Wars II  are heating up a notch with the recent JS-KIT announcement that they have acquired Haloscan just after two and a half months after announcing a partnership with Haloscan.

You may think: Commentosphere Wars II?.what do i mean with that?. well back in 2006 it was all about Social Comment Tracking services like Cocoment, co.ments, commentful, etc. Cocoment won that one very early on. now it is about Social Comment Systems that replace the default comment system with a new one with way more options that the default ones. the interesting part for Widgetslab is that all of them could be considered widget-appps because they not only count with widgets but they have widgetized approaches.

well, enough of that. returning to the story the big thing is that Haloscan was more about trackbacks and then Comments. that is what the original Haloscan-JS-KIT partnership was about. this time around is all about scale and building a bigger userbase as fast as possible:

In summary, the combined company is stronger, more reliable, and has:

• 550,000+ registered sites
• 8+ million users
• 80+ million comments
• Growth at 300+ new sites per day

This new JS-KIT now can claim to be twice as big as the closest Social Comment System competitor that is Disqus.

JS-KIT also officially launched new features:

Portable Visitor Profile

• Gives users access to their comments made across JS-Kit 550,000 publisher sites
• Encourages cross-domain traffic as users are exposed to content through the Portable Profile
• Graphic Below

Synchronization

• Gives sites the flexibility to add or remove JS-Kit Comments without risk of losing comment data
• Automatic import of existing comments from WordPress & Blogger into JS-Kit
• Automatic update of WordPress and Blogger of all new comments made in JS-Kit
• No Programming necessary (Graphic Below)

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Support

• Solves one of the key issues of hosted services by giving the publisher 100% SEO for all Comment data.

All 3 very impressive things for the previous cut and dry JS-KIT that was just a Script Widget Services provider to now also be a widgetized Social Comment System provider. of course that the other Widget services by JS-KIT will get into this new offering so the idea of being able to have polls in your comments is already enticing.

Portable Visitor Profile

Many see it as the competiton to Disqus own profiles but that would be off. the nod here is of course at SezWho that even considering that JS-KIT implementation looks good, it cannot be considered anywhere close to the mature profile and reputation system that SezWho got.

Blog Platform Synchronization

Right now it tackles the biggest fear most, me included had on Social Comment Systems. the fear of losing the comments of a blog and not be able to replace them if i opted out of one of these services.

This ends that because now it ensures that your comments are backed up and that you can get your comment pushed to your Blog Platform in the case you want to opt out of JS-KIT at any given moment.

For the moment it only support the two main Blog Platforms: Blogger and Wordpress.

Comments SEO support

This is another serious concern that were holding back many from trying a Social Comment System, the fear that the comments didn`t counted to the blog in terms of search engine reach gaining and search engine rank juice. this solves that because JS-KIT will ensure SEO support for all comment data.

I think that with this move from JS-KIT a lot of movement will happen from its most closest Competitor Disqus and the others trying to do something so they don`t fade out. JS-KIT setup got everything to win but i think the should evolve the profiles faster. maybe buying SezWho would be the best way to do it and it will also allow JS-KIT to end any chance of someone catching up to them.

Of course that the same applies to Disqus. if they suddenly went and bought SezWho and Intense Debate that would put them on the track to beat JS-KIT before it is too late.  or at least that would make for the most interesting scenario so innovation in this space boosts fast enough to force Blogger and Wordpress to revamp their outdated and boring comment systems. but then there is the third scenario of a intense debate and sezwho merging into one in a quest to beat disqus. that would be also interesting.

I wil be covering those Comment Systems and their widgets very soon.for now lest enjoy the official start of this new Commentosphere War.

JS-KIT

via JS-KIT blog