Disqus Gets VC Funding, Releases v2 and Kicks Competitions' Ass.
gigaom.com
gigaom.com
they only occupy below the fold or secondary jump pages so they're rarely a destination site. build the business intelligence site that om malik wants?
monetize the landing pages from google traffic? but then publishers will get pissed that they're stealing the googlejuice.
involve more functionality a la identity management?
morph into mini-reddits or mini-blogger for everyone and upsell?
the tradeoff of a commenting system for ads would seem ludicrous as well. the only competitive advantage they have is a network effect. build to flip?
A couple of ideas:
1. No monetization, just eyeballs until an acquisition.
2. Freemium model: paying customers (bloggers) get access to more useful services (eg: better spam protection, user tracking, demographics on commentators, better threading)
3. An attempt to make the conversation the destination. Consider a system where the comments become more interesting than the original post (/. was this way once...), and disqus having that niche, since they own/host the comments.
4. Comment aggregation, a la blog rolls. Again, make the conversation the destination.
5. Enterprise deals: the Harvard Crimson was mentioned. How about lining up CNN's iReport?
Others?
Intensedebate started out pretty well, but they never seemed to iterate. No rapid expansion = die, so, poor ID.
That said, it's a tough question as to how they could/should monetize. Freemium seems ok, but perhaps not great. I'm not sure what, but I feel like there must be something better.
their positioning is as precarious as facebook app developers.
Disqus, on the other hand, resides on thousands of independent blogs. Each one individually may decide to uninstall it or switch over to a competitor, but then Disqus loses only a tiny fraction of their userbase.
It's much better for Disqus to have that power spread thinly over a lot of individuals than to have it all in one place the way an FB app dev does, especially given the capriciousness Facebook has exhibited since day 1. Disqus has tons of users playing in thousands of back yards, much like MyBlogLog or Feedburner.
the flipside of course being that they're platform agnostic and third party they're capable of bridging the community at large and there's certainly value in being able to be a telephone instead of the telephone service provider but how do you monetize this whole thin? the only provider that has the power to monetize would be the blog software providers and even they have trouble doing that.
On a unrelated note: since when half a million qualified as a "VC" round of funding?
It just one more example to show how VC is turning more and more of a seller market.
Now, the bigger question: at what valuation?