Commenting. The Next Discontinuous Evolution.

When I first started blogging, I was rather content with Blogger's commenting system. As time went on though, I was looking at various different technologies that could plug into this blog. I then went to make a decision that I would come to regret. I installed Haloscan on my blog. Actually Haloscan wasn't really all that bad, I could moderate comments nicely and my commenters (as if there are a million comments per post!) could post a little avatar etc. But after a while I realized that once the overall comments hit a certain number, they'll get put into a database of sorts and the counter for them older comments will be reset to zero. Not that they get deleted or something but basically that's what you get for having a free Haloscan account. How do you get back the 'lost' comments? Easy, pay 12USD a year.

Er...I wasn't willing to pay just to get my comments back so I've wiped the slate clean, and installed Disqus. Yep, commenting just turned Web 2.0. There has been lots of interest in this start up and co-founder Daniel Ha even got interviewed in net@night with Leo Laporte and Amber MacArthur. So how different is Disqus compared to Haloscan and even the native Blogger commenting system?

Disqus promises to make commenting more "interactive and manageable". It kinda makes 'communities' out of commenters who then connect with each other. A side benefit of this is that promoting a blog becomes much easier with this community element present in the commenting system. Community is what makes Disqus truly Web 2.0. Here's a shot of their site:



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Intrigued, I went and looked at how this thing works in real blogs. I chose Dave Winer's blog cause well, I like his writing and he's been using Disqus for a bit now. He's also responsible for a lot of things like RSS, blogs and podcasting. Here's a look at the comments in one of the posts.



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See where the red arrow points to? that is an avatar on a Disqus powered commenting system. When I moused over it, that box with the red circle appeared. Now, look at the next avatar below, see that little 2 gray arrows pointing up and down below it? That enables you to vote the comments up or down, Digg Style. Going back to the box, you'll see a number 1 in an orange box. That will show show how much karma or 'clout' (as its called in Disqus) you have. You can even follow the person's comments via RSS (shown with the red circle. What makes it really interesting is the fact that Disqus and Seesmic have now teamed up to enable video comments to be inserted into blog comments. Here's a shot of that in action:


Now, from what I heard on Net@night, this system integrates easily into any blog and it also works as a plugin for Wordpress. When I put Disqus into my system, it actually asked if I want to overwrite my previous comments or begin from the next new post that I'll be writing. Fancy that, they actually thought that part through. Daniel when asked by Leo about monetizing the service remarked that at the moment, they were more focused on rolling out the service but the service will remain free. So to the 2-3 people who actually read this blog, take a shot at the comments and if you wanna leave a video comment, knock yourself out.

Oh yeah, I wrote this post with ScribeFire so let me know how it worked out as well.

What If: Microsoft buys FaceBook

Edit: *Grumble* that's what I get for posting blog posts past midnight..grr

I was in the midst of slowly writing up a blog post based on Twitter and Friendfeed when something popped up on my Friendfeed. This.



Ha? What?..ok ok..lets back this statement up a little. I looked up Robert's blog post on it(here), seems like he's referencing his 'former boss' John Furrier who was making a comment about how Microsoft and Yahoo's camps were in the midst of hammering out a deal to acquire Yahoo's search business. (Yeah..latest in the round of that saga.) I took a gander at Furrier's post(here) and he in turn references TechMeme's posts about the search business deal. Furrier then turns around in his post and says "After the failed bid for $40 plus billion for all of Yahoo, Microsoft’s intentions are clear. Buy the search business from Yahoo and take that team and go spend at least 20 billion for Facebook. Integrating the search team at Yahoo with Facebook puts a formidable army to take on Google." He further goes to say that by doing this, Microsoft will end up spending $45 billion and be in a position to compete with Google. Now, remember that all this is just RUMOUR and most of the statements are at best speculative.

But I like speculation. Especially when Robert comes out with it.

Robert remarks that there are a few issues to consider here:

1. Google does not have access to events and other selected items on Facebook. That 'locks out' Google. - "This is a fight for the Web. We all just crawled inside a box that locks Google out."

2. This will hand on a silver platter to Microsoft an Aladdin Cave (ok, maybe the cave won't fit on a platter) full of Internet Information that will give them sudden empowerment in the Internet search area.

3. (via Twitter..not in his post) We're about to hand over HTTP access to Microsoft and they can shut it down if they want to.

First, lets take a look at these 'sweeping' statements. (you just gotta get to know Robert better!)
1. This is partly true as you can search notes, some public galleries etc.
2. True if it EVER happens.
3. Yep. This is possible again only if MS buys Facebook and in fact if your'e not logged on, you can't access anything on Facebook. Remember also that there is the indiscriminate removal of people from Facebook for no apparent reason. I had a friend who sent out some messages to all his friends on Facebook. Boom! banned. Reason given by Facebook? "You're abusing the messaging system" So, If I want to announce that I just became a father again to all my 102 friends does that mean I'll get kicked out too? (that was hypothetical, the baby I mean. We haven't even considered number 2) Irina Slutsky (very respected Internet personality.) also got kicked out couple of days ago. No reason given. So have many people.

Microsoft IS capable of shutting down part of the Internet if this deal is done. At the moment tho, it is merely speculation that might even never see the light of day. But it is possible. Robert actually has another part of his blog post suggest that in order for the public Web to 'fight back', we should take on FriendFeed. It 'replaces all of Facebook's killer features with open ones which are open to Google's search'. Actually, he's true with this statement. Some people have taken this to mean that Google's search is open. Heh.. fat chance. Its not. But is FriendFeed really a replacement for Facebook?

Well, its not. I've been using FriendFeed for a couple of weeks now and while I've gotten like totally addicted to it, it doesn't replace Facebook for me. Now, I've kinda fallen off Facebook since I started Twittering seriously some time back, but I still go back to it for only one reason. All my friends are there. Sure, I can incorporate stuff like Twitter,Last.fm, Pownce, Jaiku and any rss feed I want but only one of my real friends are there with me. Maybe Malaysians haven't warmed up to the idea of FriendFeed yet. *shrug* The loneliness of being an early adopted I suppose. Meanwhile, its very important to understand what Robert has highlighted with his post and even more important to note how much of your personal information FaceBook has. Don't forget the Beacon fiasco. This is the Internet we're talking about. Just because Facebook suddenly took off and everyone is on it, dosen't mean you shouldn't be responsible for your private data.

More reading:

http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2008/may08/05-18statement.mspx
http://yhoo.client.shareholder.com/press/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=310948