Disqus Gets A New Look, Premium Add-Ons, New API | Hacker News Reader

Disqus Gets A New Look, Premium Add-Ons, New API

techcrunch.com

46 pointsbdr27 comments

>Speaking of the API, with this version 4 roll-out, it has been completely redesigned from scratch. It’s still a bit of a work in progress, says co-founder Daniel Ha, but it should be more powerful. In fact, the new Disqus website is running off of it.

Dogfooding the API is the only way to really know what's useful. This is fantastic news.

The new public pages look gorgeous, especially that huge 3D graphic on the home page. Good job Chris Jennings!

Thanks Al!

Disqus seems to be on a tear - congratulations to them.

Of the big internet companies, which of them develop features in-house and don't rely upon external plugins/apis? Facebook (photos, comments, feeds, ads, login) Google (everything!) - in fact they try to export their logins/search/"Like" etc to other sites perhaps because they see the immense value of keeping control over this information.

Yahoo, meanwhile, has apparently outsourced or "plugged-in" third party providers for just about everything from dating to real estate - and at the end of the day they gave away too much and are left with nothing.

Perhaps this is the way things go now, but where are the other paranoid developers that want to hoarde all their interactions and user data and keep it to themselves in order to build up a competitive advantage?

</cynical rant>

I switched my blog to disqus, on wordpress, because I thought it would help increase interactions since it has all these hooks into other services.

Surprisingly, it did not.

I guess people will leave a comment regardless of what commenting system you use.

That being said. I love disqus. You can build interactions into any webpage in a matter of seconds.

Ps. If disqus admins are reading this. Please do some testing around importing comments from wordpress blogs with lots of comments... I emailed you guys about this before.. Just a reminder...

Just for curiosity's sake, how many comments do you currently get per article (rough guess/average)? I wonder if there is a threshold where a better commenting system increases comments (e.g. TechCrunch has 89 on this article as of now - maybe 3-6% wouldn't have commented if it wasn't Disqus).

I haven't seen anyone mention performance, but as I understand it, Disqus can make your pages slow to load. Anyone know if the new version is faster?

We constantly address performance issues and it is our top priority. On that note, yes, it can take a bit longer to load than embedded comments (server-side), but they load asynchronously so your content isnt waiting on your comments.

Biggest Django app ever?

That we know of

Probably, until Mozilla moves their "check for addon updates" endpoint (which gets hit everytime any Firefox window is opened) gets migrated anyways :)

Disqus is larger than the Mozilla Addons application

Sure, but would it be larger than the "check for addons" endpoint, which is still PHP?

Based what was presented at the last DjangoCon, I believe so. We're doing around 1b pageviews a month now.

It's interesting that they're having success, I'd personally have never said it possible that a company could role out a global comment system, what caused this success for disqus? The only thing I think it could be is tumblr adopting it for some blogs, but I don't see it much. Anyone know what caused their success, a tipping point of sorts?

I believe the adoption of WordPress users early on made a large difference.

The number-one thing Disqus had going for it was Daniel Ha's omnipresence and superhuman kindness. When they had a forum, Daniel Ha made an effort to answer every question, no matter how ridiculous or rude, in the most elaborate, inhumanly kind way. If a blogger - oftentimes a big one - mentioned Disqus but expressed some reservations, Daniel would be quick to contact them with offers for a complete transition walkthrough - and I am sure a lot of people took him up on the offer.

Second, you can not whisper Disqus's name in a toilet stall in the outskirts of Siberia without Gianii or Daniel hearing you. They've got all kinds of alerts configured so they can respond to every publicly declared frustration with Disqus, and they're impeccable at what they do.

Daniel Ha's effort to fight any reservations and unfounded doubts about the service is a case study that should be in every entrepreneur's mandatory curriculum. I think of his philosophy every time I consider the community aspects of a hypothetical project.

Wow, I came in here to say the same thing. I don't get enough traffic through Disqus to have issues at the moment, but when I did a while back I remember Daniel bending over backwards to answer all of my questions and it left an absolutely incredible impression. I thought that in a world of meticulously curated "FAQS" and auto-repsonse e-mails that Daniel was remarkably refreshing.

Kudos.

Don't forget the rest of the staff. They bend over backwards to make their clients happy.

Yes, don't forget us! :p

They only started out as two people. Daniel was undeniably the most visible person - not that the ratio of effort is to be inferred from this at all.

It was probably more of a Disqus effort than a Daniel Ha effort, but until I know for sure, Daniel Ha deserves the credit. :)

I recently added Disqus on my blog because it allowed me an easy way to add dynamically-generated comments on an otherwise static site (I'm using Jekyll). It took all of 5 minutes to get it working the way I wanted.

This is excellent. Before, the fragility of the Disqus design and API (both their site and the product itself) kept me from being interested.

The new design shows that they're serious about the product, and they're willing to put their money where their mouth is.

I'll probably give it a shot, now.

I hear the new API is pretty sexy

Lol zeeg didn't we talk about your new API at the mirage in Vegas last weekend?

I have no idea what you're talking about ;)

I was trying to remember what that frisbee thing is called. Discus!

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