Yea. We're aware of both of these.

branch is definitely a good one but it's really a different product and market. it's not forums and not really a commenting system for your site also.

and we don't take pivory very seriously

I've seen both of these. Pivory seems not really very mature/serious, and branch doesn't seem like a forum replacement.

IMHO pivory is hideous (different strokes) and still feels too bound by trying to simply make old forums "cool". Seems that commenting and forums line really should be more blurred. I know some people really like pivory but I'm not sure it's really a contendor for a serious forum replacement for a real site. At least in my view.

branch on the other hand is really quite unique. I think however it's more of a commenting platform or something for closed discussions, maybe for some kind of collaborative solution even.. rather than a forum replacement.

Wow, Pivory is clean and well done, no threading though, a shame.

Stack Exchange is a break for the norm for sure. I guess I don't really consider it since it's not something you can setup on your site to power your own forums and commenting.

Yea. There are definitely something good going on with Stack Exchange but there is lot's of re-thinking on Moot

- forums can be embedded on our site with just a few lines of HTML and it works out of the box

- because it's a true integration with WebSockets and CORS technologies you have complete CSS and JavaScript control

- Moot includes commenting that is as easy to embed as forums

- The real-time aspect on Moot is not just an "cool add on", but the app is completely real time from top to bottom. All operations happen in place and everyone get's notified instantly.

- "My Feed" or "All posts" are simple concepts but you cannot see them elsewhere. Traditional forums are list of links that point to another list of links and you end up clicking and sufring a lot.

Maybe you want to try out search

http://flowplayer.org/forum/#!/search/welcome

To get sense of the speed too.