Disqus vs. Proprietary?
Which do you prefer when on a new site that you do not have an account for? Does using disqus change the way you interact with the site at all?
1) Users can easily comment, with or without an account, with their Twitter, with their Facebook, etc.
2) It can create a greater amount of exposure for that particular post + comment (Through Twitter and Facebook broadcasts)
3) Disqus has a very clean look about it and the way it presents posts that I really enjoy
4) You can easily moderate + view statistics of various sites in one central location (Disqus website)
Hope that helps!
Not having disqus doesn't change my willingness to contribute, providing I can do so simply..like entering my name and email. If I have to register/confirm/activate forget about it unless it's a site I'm particularly invested in (say, HN).
From the development point of view, unless you have specific needs which disqus doesn't meet, I don't see why anyone wouldn't use them. They've turned the "writing a blog in language XYZ" tutorials into 5 minute exercises. On the top end, they are used by an ever growing and impressive list of people. Finally, since you can export all comments at any times, I really don't see what you lose.
I don't know, it's a bit too "in your face" if you know what I mean? A good UI goes out of your way, disqus doesn't quite do that very well.
That's just my opinion.
I actually use disqus for tumblr, because there isn't much of another choice there.
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2500716/open-source-comme...
There are also lots of other discussions related to this on SO.
In my opinion: with disqus you get to be lazy. That's fine. I use it on my personal site. I don't think it allows for infinite branching (like on Reddit), but that requires a pretty nifty nosql solution, were you to do it on your own.
I used Intense Debate for my Wordpress blog. After some annoyances, I disabled it and switched back to Wordpress' own comments. I'll probably try out Disqus when I have time... It will irk visitors, but you can switch between commenting systems if you want to test.