I had it. I did not need convincing. And, Fred Wilson, my favorite blogger, was doing it. So. But then when I changed my template at Blogger.com where my blog is hosted (I am a Google fanboy) I did not bother adding Disqus again. I was not getting that many comments in the first place.
But now I am thinking about adding it again. Disqus is the leader of the pack. Noone does commenting better. And now that Disqus allows you to sign in with Facebook Connect, one major advantage Facebook Commenting had is no longer there.
I am strongly considering reinstalling Disqus at this blog.
I so appreciate blogs that have Disqus. Leaving comments is easy, and it is easy to track those comments should they generate replies. So if it works for me as a reader of other peoples' blogs, it perhaps will work for my readers.
The new and improved Disqus has really taken commenting at blogs to a whole new level. It was good enough originally but the new one is so much better. The little engine that could. Google is far behind in the arena and Facebook now no longer has obvious advantages in the space. And these are two companies that do not get accused of having become "Microsoft." I mean, they move pretty fast when it comes to innovation.
There is a lesson in there. If the intensity of your focus in the space is bigger than that of a big company, you will beat the big company.
Image via CrunchBaseFred Wilson put out this blog post earlier today: Social Media's Secret Weapon - Email. Brad Feld wrote a reply post within hours: Implementing Social Media’s Secret Weapon. Fred Wilson showed up in Brad Feld's comments section for the post like Brad Feld had showed up earlier in Fred Wilson's comments section for his post. I read the two posts and all their comments. The little back and forth the two had at Brad's blog is really something. I am like, thank you Disqus. How else could I have become privy to this?
These two dudes go way back. They are old friends. I once saw a picture of the two of them in a group photo. It is from way back. And these two also made it onto a list of the top 100 venture capitalists in the world a few weeks back, I don't know if it was Fortune, or Forbes, it was one of those. Long before I saw that list I have admired the excellence of their minds. Both of them also happen to have great blogs. They do a good job of giving you a front row seat to their action if you drop by often enough.
Image via CrunchBaseI got excited about Facebook Comments right away, long before it got rolled out. I am very much for using real names with comments. When you leave a comment at my blog, I want the option to be able to click over to your Facebook profile if I want to. I want you to stand by what you have to say. I want to meet real people. To me that's the whole point behind the internet, that geography is irrelevant. The blogosphere's appeal is that it allows for a meeting of minds. Facebook Comments takes that to a whole new level. It is more than meeting of minds, it is also meeting real people.
Image via CrunchBaseBoxee is the big dog. It's not Apple TV, it's not Google TV. Wordpress beats Blogger. When you think check in, you are more likely to think FourSquare than Facebook. There is something about the nimble startup that is focused on one mission.
Facebook just threw a big one in the direction of Disqus, a service I love.
I have not used the Facebook Comments thing yet that you are supposed to be able to have added to your blog, but I am liking the description of it. I think Facebook nailed it.
I have said several times at this blog that if Google wants to "get" social, it needs to go into the blogosphere. But now looks like Facebook is about to beat Google there too. This is a really, really smart move on the part of Facebook.
Caroline McCarthy: Facebook's next big media move: Comments: Facebook is planning to launch a third-party commenting system in a matter of weeks ..... This new technology could see Facebook as the engine behind the comments system on many high-profile blogs and other digital publications very soon....... it's an obvious and direct competitor to start-ups that provide commenting technology, like Disqus and Echo. With Facebook Places adopting much of the "check-in" methodology that smaller competitors Foursquare and Loopt offer, and Facebook Questions operating in the same space as Quora
Facebook Places did not kill FourSquare. Actually the day Facebook Places launched, FourSquare had its biggest day to that date. I expect something similar to happen to Disqus.
On the other hand, I really like the idea of comments sections at blogs where people necessarily have to use their real names. I think that would enhance the quality of comments.
ReadWriteWeb: I Like to Dislike! Facebook Introduces Comment Voting, Threads: now allows users to up- and down-vote other comments ..... comments are not only threaded, meaning each user can reply directly to another user, but more information is shown on each person, including their job and company, or network, and their comment record. The system also allows for up- and down-voting ..... Each comment begins with one point and a vote up or down raises or lowers that rating by a point. .... your comment stays at the top, so you can manage your comment and conversation ..... the move certainly encroaches on the territory of commenting systems like Disqus, Echo and Intense Debate. .... with more active posts rising to the top and negating the usual newest to oldest order. Allowing users to vote on posts and on individual comments could really alter the entire dynamic of Facebook.
It was only a matter of time. I knew something like this was bound to happen. The like button was going to be more sophisticated. And it is getting there. The open graph just became more useful. Facebook comments just became more useful. Now it has become more possible to navigate updates that might collect hundreds of comments. This is called scaling.
The Facebook Blog: More Ways to Stay Secure: If you have any concerns about security of the computer you're using while accessing Facebook, we can text you a one-time password to use instead of your regular password. ..... Simply text "otp" to 32665 on your mobile phone (U.S. only), and you'll immediately receive a password that can be used only once and expires in 20 minutes. ..... the ability to sign out of Facebook remotely
Image via CrunchBaseI just noticed that now TechCrunch has Disqus served up in its comments sections. At first it had the in house thing. Then they had IntenseDebate, then they went back to the in-house thing, and now finally they got Disqus. This "outsourcing" is a smart move. Now I am much more likely to read more TechCrunch articles and to comment on them and to share my comments over Twitter.
Mashable has always had Disqus. My blog has Disqus.
Smart move, TechCrunch. Let us all welcome the latecomer.
Chris Dixon is a great entrepreneur and investor, and he has a great blog (it's on my blogroll), but his latest post on Twitter I did not find all that impressive. The guy comes across as high on diligence, not so high on vision.
This morning when I showed up at AVC.com for my morning coffee - I am not much of a coffee drinker, by the way, beer and coffee are strictly social for me - Fred Wilson had mentioned Chris Dixon. Obviously the two have a mutual admiration thing going on.
And what's up with bloggers who flash this road sign on their old posts? "Comments for this page are closed." I don't do it, I don't get it. It is not like your blog post can not be found a few weeks later. Unless you are someone who makes a point to read every comment that was ever left at your blog. That might be Fred's rationale behind flashing that road sign. I don't flash it. I use my Disqus dashboard to manage my comments. It probably helps that I don't get all that many. Looks like Fred and Chris have a high class problem to have: many, too many comments.
Chris was already on my blogroll. He does have a swell blog. But this attention from Fred made sure he got promoted to the A1 section on my blogroll. These are bloggers that if they post something new, I have to go read it if I spot it. There are too many white males in that section. And a disproportionate number of Indians, but that is understandable.
Fred and Chris should have been there when they ran me out of the Sun building: Presenting At The Dot Com Hatchery. I came from the narrative angle, and they came from the not-ready-for-prime-time, the-guy-does-not-have-numbers angle.
Anyways, so I am thinking, I have not been to Chris Dixon's blog in a while, let me go look at some fresh stuff. And I found this.
Twitter is perhaps - not perhaps, it is - the most talked about company at my blog. That is why I think I would be a great addition to the Union Square Ventures team: Union Square Ventures Job Opening: I Am Applying. Twitter is the best investment Fred ever made, in my opinion.
This is the Twitter narrative: Fractals: Apple, Windows 95, Netscape, Google, Facebook, Twitter. Either you get it or you don't get it. If I were to write that blog post today, I'd probably add FourSquare at the end. But I will admit I did not see FourSquare coming. I was at FourSquare's demo at the NY Tech MeetUp I believe in March 2009. I remember not being impressed. Although I made a point to say hello to the Indian looking guy Naveen, who sensed it and was not impressed.
Fred Wilson imagined a Twitter like service before he actually came across Twitter, and it was slightly different from what he had imagined, it was better than what he had imagined, it was a case of reality being stranger than fiction. But scientists knew of Pluto, before they actually pinned it down. Fred Wilson and Esther Dyson are visionaries. Every time I get to meet Esther she makes my day. And I have met her at a few different NY Tech MeetUps. I don't think she knows me, but I could care less. The first time I saw her, I immediately recognized her, I could not believe it was her I was seeing. I thought the NY Tech MeetUp was for mere mortals like myself.
This is what I am looking at for the first half of this year. I guess this could go on for all of this year, and maybe even some of next year, but I don't feel confident projecting too far ahead. 2010 is definitely location's buzz year. Next year the space will have matured and receded from the headlines a little.
So coming back to Chris Dixon and Twitter.
Twitter having sent mixed signals over the past few years..... somehow Twitter had convinced the world they were going to “let a thousand flowers bloom” – as if they were a non-profit out to save the world, or that they would invent some fantastic new business model that didn’t encroach on third-party developers...... Twitter has yet to figure out a business model..... Twitter search will monetize poorly ..... Twitter’s move into mobile clients and hints about a more engaging website suggest they may be trying to mimic Facebook’s display ad model. ...Facebook’s ad growth is being driven largely by companies like Zynga who are in turn monetizing users with social games and virtual goods..... Facebook’s model depends on owning “eyeballs,” which is entirely contradictory to the pure API model Twitter has promoted thus far. ....Hopefully Twitter “fills holes” through acquisitions instead of internal development. ..... but on the product development front has been underwhelming ....Now that Twitter seems to be mimicing Facebook...Facebooker Ivan Kirigin tweeted yesterday: “I suppose when your competition is making huge mistakes, you should just stfu.”
Other than the fact that this guy is running a few days behind, obviously he has not blogged since Twitter made its big announcement. That is curious because the Twitter announcement was the biggest announcement in tech this past week. As far as I am concerned, the Twitter announcement is bigger than the iPad release. Twitter affects and will affect far more people. Steve Jobs, the Pied Piper. (The iPad Is No Laptop Killer)
Twitter has not sent any mixed signals. There is an almost total overlap between the Twitter path and the Google path. First build the product. Worry about monetization later. Just like there is a Google ecosystem (and this blog - Netizen - is part of it), there will continue to be a Twitter ecosystem. But Google bought Blogger and YouTube. Twitter will make its purchases. Twitter never pretended to be a non profit. If there are people who ever thought Twitter was a non profit, that can't be Twitter's fault.
Twitter search will monetize poorly? Chris, Twitter is second only to Google in the search arena. That has to ring a bell.
Twitter could not imitate Facebook even if it wanted to. Google could not become Facebook. Facebook can not become Twitter. Facebook and Twitter can add location, but FourSquare will thrive. Vision 101.
Facebook has not in earnest started to monetize. Their ad model will rely on the social graph and the social interactions. In a sense Facebook has not yet done what Twitter has done already. (Facebook's Ad Space Is Different)
The "API model" has been about extending Twitter's reach and making tweets fundamental to the web experience. It has been part of product development. It was never a business model.
It is not a choice between buy or build. Twitter has to do both. Each situation is slightly unique. My suggestion has been to go for an IPO, and then go on a buying spree: Twitter Should Go For A Netscape-Like IPO.
Twitter deserves credit for Twitter.com, but it also deserves credit for the Twitter ecosystem. I could complain Google did not give me Gmail on day one, or I could say thanks, they finally did it.
How is Twitter mimicking Facebook? The Facebook Ivan dude is making even less sense. Twitter is in the best shape it has ever been after its Chirp announcements. And there are people who think Twitter is imploding? Wet dreams.
We need to talk some resonance sense into this guy.
Fred Wilson's blog post today is about comments: Some Thoughts On Comments. And my blog runs a real danger of ending a satellite blog to the AVC blog. (Kidding, of course) Yesterday I put out a reply blog post, this is another. (The Inbox Could See New Life This Year) Usually I stick to Fred's comments sections.
I have complimented Fred's being a wonderful blogger several times before. He is my favorite solo blogger. And his comments sections are a great hangout place. If I get the USV job, two of the things I might want to do would be (a) produce a 30 minute video of Fred every week, and (b) organize offline get-togethers of the AVC community. It might not be monthly, but it would be a good idea to have them a few times a year. I think I appreciate the important role Fred's blog plays in his management challenges. Talking through a blog post might be a great way to communicate to some of the portfolio companies, not to say super efficient. And it does not put them on the spot. It is an open platform. There is a free rolling comments section that chugs along.
I made the observation a few days back that AVC collects more comments per post than most posts on TechCrunch, and that is remarkable considering the huge disparity in traffic levels between the two blogs. And there is no concept of The Regulars at TechCrunch.
I got excited about Disqus before I learned it was one of Fred's portfolio companies. I have to tell you about what Disqus means to me. I use Disqus more often than I use so many of the better known social media platforms. I am not going to name and shame them. And Disqus is frankly half the weight at the AVC blog. Fred reads every comment anyone ever leaves at his blog. I think that is really something. But that is also a big part of the reason why there is a sense of community at AVC. Once in a while someone will show up and do a drive-by shooting, but the community has learned to take care of itself. The Regulars feel protective of each other. Dissent is okay, even celebrated, but slander is not. But I come from the free speech before decency school of thought. So I am okay with a little bit of background radiation.
Disqus Next
What could Disqus do to take itself to the next level? That is a tough question for me because the number one item on my Disqus agenda is to see its wider adoption. I wish every blog I ever visited had Disqus. I know of a lot of people who will not even bother leaving comments at a blog if it does not have Disqus. Mashable has Disqus, TechCrunch does not. I think Disqus has been part of the reason Mashable has done so well so fast.
How do you better organize the 100 comments a blog post might accumulate? I don't know. My blog does not have that problem right now. And although AVC regularly accumulates over 100 comments per blog post, for me that has not been a problem. I usually end up reading all of them. And when the intent is to read them all, chronological works best. You start from the first comment and end up with the last.
But I can see why you might want to read only 10 out of 100 comments and ask Disqus to figure out what those 10 should be.
One could be the like button. Comments that have been liked bubble up to the top. The one with the most likes are at the very top.
Two would be the option to follow people on Disqus. So if I follow Fred Wilson on Disqus, his comments show up first no matter where I might be in the blogosphere. Or you could integrate with FacebookConnect. My Facebook friends show up first.
Three would be a way for a blogger to decide on the hierarchy of his or her commenters. The default setting might be that the commenters who have left the most comments overall bubble to the top. Or a blogger would have the option to give stars to his/her top commenters. These are the five people who are my top commenters. When they comment, place them at the top.
An odd one would be length. Long comments rise to the top.
Disqus Enterprise
This is where I smell money. Say I am a small business. And I want Disqus to be my primary customer service software. What will you do for me? One option to have would be for the comments to not get displayed at all. I want to see the feedback. Maybe I don't want the entire world to see the feedback. How about comments that are tied to specific transactions? What if you could see the five items I bought from you before I left you that snarky comment? Or what if Disqus would read and categorize the comments for me? Great product, thanks, should not be in the same category as, you need to change the color scheme of your front page. And there should be a quick way to respond.
A lot of Google customer service is Q&A pages. Disqus should make it possible for any business small or big to roll that out. Let customers be each other's customer care for the most part. Let them answer each other's questions for the most part. Make repeat questions unnecessary.
Disqus The Savior
Blogs and sites that routinely get thousand plus comments per post need help, and they need help now. Find me the 10 comments out of that pile of thousand that I might want to read and possibly reply to.
Disqus, A Microblogging Platform
Considering I use it so much, I might as well call it like it is.
On another note, I was just thinking, if Geocities has been Fred's best deal so far, that was a M&A. Yahoo bought Geocities. If Twitter is going to be Fred's first IPO, I am now even more excited about the idea. :-)
Twitter is the best deal Fred ever did. And how he did it is a remarkable story.
I was also thinking, if you have 28 companies in your portfolio, you probably work extra hard to make sure the not so star companies do feel the love. It also helps that companies that will bring the biggest returns need the least hand holding.
I first came across the AVC.com blog. Frankly I thought the name was cheesy. VCs are not supposed to have blogs, I thought. VCs are supposed to be inaccessible, working in smoke filled rooms. A blog is the opposite of a smoke filled room.
Then I started visiting the blog once in a while, after having bookmarked it and not visited for months. I started liking it. It was a decent blog. It was interesting. The blog posts touched on many current topics of interest to me.
Then I started liking it a lot.
I got excited about Zemanta and Disqus before I realized they were Fred Wilson's portfolio companies. That made me respect the guy. It was only a matter of time before I realized he was an investor in Twitter, and sat on the Twitter Board. That was a big nugget to have come across in 2009. 2009 was Twitter's year. During the first half everyone was talking about Twitter. The icing on the cake was to realize no, Twitter did not pitch Fred Wilson. Fred Wilson pitched Twitter.
I like vision people. Clearly Fred Wilson was a visionary.
I wish there were a few top tech entrepreneurs who were as avid bloggers as Fred Wilson is. That would be a triumph. I wish all of the very top tech entrepreneurs were avid bloggers. Not even Kevin Rose is, and he is not exactly the topmost entrepreneur. Fred Wilson kind of stands out in the tech industry that way.
And then I realized Geocities also had been part of Fred's portfolio. I was a Geocities guy back in the days, an avid user. I was sad when Yahoo shut down Geocities recently. Geocities was the original online community.
Fred Wilson did not need to prove to me no more. This cat's got something going on, I thought.
If you are an early stage entrepreneur, you are, of course, looking to find the VC types. For a while I thought of pitching Fred. We even exchanged a few emails. If he was not going to come in himself, he was going to lead me to some people. But I was too early stage. Like too. And I did not articulate myself well.
Then I was resigned to the fact I just don't fall in his domain expertise zone. He does "web services." I am absolutely not in the dot com space.
But that did not change the fact that he was a visionary in the tech industry, and he had become my favorite solo blogger. I very rarely emailed him, but when I did, he replied. That was and is a big deal.
Maybe A VC For Me
But I was not going to give up. You can't bemoan not having a 200 billion dollar tech company in New York City, and stay stuck in the dot com space. I took a friendly swing at Fred Wilson in a blog post. When I started work on that blog post, I had no intention to do so. But a few paragraphs later I was doing it. What the heck, I thought. Tell it like it is. (Fred Wilson's Insight)
Fred Wilson's Gift To Me
Finally it happened. Fred Wilson gave his gift to me. It happened in his comments section to this blog post: Yochai Benkler On TheBroadband Plan. Yes, he is open to going beyond the dot com space, he will invest in broadband if the spectrum is opened up. Opening up the spectrum is a political battle. I am well suited for a political fight like that one. Taking a singular focus to a revolutionary proposition. I could do that. I am itching for the fight.
"There isn't enough competition on the access side of the Internet, both wireline and broadband. The rest of the Internet stack is hypercompetitive and is innovating at a mile a minute. But in access, we have monopolies who go at whatever speed suits them. There's nothing pushing them to go faster."
Finally, for the first time, Fred Wilson and I are "talking."
(1) Hardware (2) Software (3) Connectivity.
Paul Allen wanted MSFT to do both hardware and software. Bill Gates vetoed that. He said no, only software. He was right. But by now the biggest virgin territories are in sector three: Connectivity. That is where the big fortunes stand to be made. Hardware and software will hum along, but the biggest disruptions stand to be made in sector three. The dot com space is kinda saturated by comparison, although that space will always stay fertile because the human mind never satiates. But sector three is where big things will be done in the next push.
My company wants to bring hundreds of millions of new people online. Internet access is the voting right for this 21st century. Take me to the fight.
Andrew Parker
And then Andrew Parker happened out of the blue. I'd love to do a May 2010-May 2011 stint with Union Square Ventures. I think my startup will have covered more ground in three years with this stint than without it. I hope I get to do it: fingers crossed.
I was just busy leaving tens of comments at this particular blog post by Fred Wilson, the VC also known as AVC, and it occurred to me that we treat blog comments as almost illegitimate. There is that near universal no follow command that pulls down comments left at most blogs. I appreciate the logic behind it. Spam commenters would skew the GooglePageRank mechanism. Links in the comments sections should not carry the same weights as links in the body of articles and blog posts. But to say they should carry no weight
at all is ridiculous. By that logic, email should be banned. Those Nigerian dictators are reason enough. So far the way we have treated blog comments - with hostility - stems out of ignorance. If you don't fathom it, destroy it.
By that logic, Twitter is out and out ridiculous. (I Get Twitter) 140 characters? Come on.
There is blogging and there is microblogging. Twitter is microblogging, and has more than earned its rightful place. It has all the buzz. Blog posts are content. Blog post comments are microcontent. Microcontent has not been given its rightful place. And I think that has been a mistake. Good to see Disqus at work to remedy that. But it is not growing fast enough for me. There are too many blog posts that I come across that I want
to comment on but can't because I got there before Disqus did.
I would be curious to know how Disqus deals with the no follow nonsense.
It is Google that is slow. It has yet to deal with tweets. Google and/or Facebook have still to deal with Facebook updates. Google is nowhere close to even wanting to deal with comments at the bottom of blog posts. How social is that? Not at all.
Allan showed up in the comments section of my blog postNew York Times, Don't Die, Live. I replied. Then we switched to email. Now we are scheduled for a three way chat session tomorrow morning, him, me and someone from his team.
Right now I don't have a solid grasp as to the vision of this particular team, or how well they are going to execute, but the idea itself is a trailblazer. It is about time something like this got done.
Some questions that have popped up in my mind:
Who turns a blog into a password protected blog? Would that be a separate service?
Who will go seek the advertisers? If readers opt to pay for 99 cents or less through viewing ads, who makes sure to get those advertisers?
Can you get all the credit card options and still get paid only through PayPal as a blogger?
What would be PayCheckr's cut? A percentage? What percentage?
Just like Disqus takes care of everything to do with your blog's comments sections and Zemanta takes care of all your links, tags and images, PayCheckr should attempt to take care of all details to do with monetizing your no-longer-free blog. It could grow fast.
I got excited about Geocities when it came along back in the days. You mean I can have my own homepage? To this day my Geocities homepage is the first page I go to when I go online ea
ch day. When I jump to Twitter, Facebook, Gmail or Google Search, it is from my Geocities homepage. I was saddened to learn a few weeks back that Yahoo plans to shut down Geocities by the end of the year. I think that is a bad decision on the part of Yahoo.
I have been excited about Twitter most of this year.
I got taken by Disqus and Zemanta a few months back. They have taken my blogging to a whole different level. There is no blogging without Disqus and Zemanta as far as I am concerned.
Before Disqus came along, blog comments sections were a wasteland. Now it has becom
e valuable real estate. The blog comments sections are microblogging territory just like Twitter. They are a better way to meet new people who might share your interests than even Twitter. And Disqus is the reigning monarch there. And it is one of those things where having the first mover advantage makes all the difference. Twitter has had that in its turf.
A few months back I came across a blog called AVC.com. A venture capitalist with a blog, and not a ghostwritten blog, or a blog because it was cool to have a blog. This was a guy who was really into blogging. This was no vanity blogger. This was a genuine blogger who also happened to be a venture capitalist. At that point I did not know of what stature.
Recently I started reading that blog regularly and commenting in the comments sectio
ns. The blogger/VC replied to some of my comments, and even left a comment at my own blog.
I am a Deaniac from 2004. I moved to NYC summer of 2005. Howard Dean got to know me through DFNYC. I have been fast friends with the MeetUp CEO Scott for a few years now. And I am eFriends with Joe Trippi. Today I learned Fred Wilson is also associated with MeetUp.
I have been honored to have exchanged a few emails with Fred Wilson this past week.
MeetUp is a Web 5.0 company. I could argue Geocities was a 2.0 company before that term got coined. Twitter needs no introduction, soon Disqus and Zemanta will not either.