The Numbers of Disqus
blog.disqus.com
blog.disqus.com
They seem to be in a pretty difficult position though. The product is the very definition of a "feature", and one that is most definitely a commodity.
Facebook Comments just launched and it's quite well done. Since most people are logged into their FB accounts all the time it means instant commenting with real identities. Exactly what most sites need to increase commenting while maintaining civility.
Revenue is also a big problem. Between Facebook Comments and other free competitors there's not much room to charge for pro features or add advertising.
I'm a fan, but don't really see how they're going to become a big business in the future to return 5-10x on this $10M.
Granted, they might in the future, but commenting is our sole product right now, and you can bet we'll do the best we can do make it awesome :)
Disqus is used on a number of really big sites, some are listed in this blog post (such as RWW and Wired), but there are other massive examples, such as the MLB network of sites.
Of the 530m uniques and 35 million disqus-using people, is it a case of x% coming from y% of the websites that have disqus on them, where x is close to 100 and y is close to 0?
For example, 750,000 websites use disqus, if you take only the stats from, say, the 50 biggest, what percentage of the 35 million is that? (Replace 50 with any number that turns out more interesting.)
Any chance a disqus person might care to share?
The number of probable months since I've commented using Disqus.
I have found myself much more interested in commenting on Hacker News than any of the articles I read here. The only exception I can think of is when I need to comment to the author of the article and it is obvious that they don't read Hacker News.
As for the popularity of Disqus, I see their commenting system everywhere today! And I have to admit, I think the world is a better place for it.
Engadget's commenting system has always been its weakness. The site has (I blieve) the best gadget reporting on the internet, but its comment section is on-par with YouTube's. I can't remember the last time I tried to read the comment's on a popular article that didn't devolve into a flame war between some kind of fanboy faction.
If that site's planning to rescue its users from inane, inflammatory or outright inaccurate commenting, it needs to use a moderation system that's much more aggressive about filtering and burying the bad, while promoting the good. And that's not something that Disqus does very well.
So, in particular, when I click on a link to read it, then hit back to upvote it and/or comment on it, it takes a long time to re-find it.
(Yes, I could open it in a new tab, blah blah.)