DISQUS, IntenseDebate & JS-Kit – Analysis

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DISQUS, IntenseDebate and JS-Kit are the three most popular choices when it comes to Comment Services for bloggers.

Obviously there are so many ways people can leave comment on any blog. Visitors can use native blogging platform comment system which might support comment using Email, OpenIDs, Facebook Connect and/or the most popular web 2.0 service Twitter using OAuth. And if visitors have profiles on any of three above mentioned service then they can use these profiles to leave a comment.

Problem:

All sounds good when we look at the options in hand. I mean there are unlimited ways to recognize your online identity. But everyone has their own preference. Some prefer using Facebook Connect, some prefer the old school method of Emails and many many people like to use OpenID as the preferred way of recognizing them online.

Now you ask, what is the problem?

Well, the problem is

None of the native blog platform comment systems provide these many choices.
They don’t help increasing participation on the blog discussion.
To date, none of them support Facebook Connect, Twitter and other social media connections.
Not all platforms support replying to comments by email.
etc.etc…

That’s why services like DISQUS, IntenseDebate and JS-Kit came into existence. Because they try to provide bloggers with an opportunity to get what is missing out of their native blogging platform.

Above is a small poll result conducted on twitter using twtpoll.

Then why the Analysis?

As I said, not all of them provide the same set of features.

JS-Kit:

provides almost all the options anyone would want to use to leave a comment on your blog.
supports Haloscan, Google Friend Connect, Facebook Connect, Twitter, OpenID and obviously emails.
Edit: Live, comments update on the page without page refresh, encouraging visitors to talk with each other! using ECHO (a paid feature)
Edit: Real-Time, updates from Twitter, FriendFeed/FaceBook, Digg, and so on. A nice feature but feels very noisy and hard to follow. Tried on Techcrunch, but many people didn’t like the fast scrolling. Hopefully that will improve overtime. (But again, it is a paid feature)
Edit: Photo attachements and video embeds.
provides very less customization options as to how it looks on a blog.
doesn’t provide many themes and a little geeky to modify anything using CSS.
syncs your existing and future comments with Blogger native comment system. You don’t need to import or export comments to use or discontinue using JS-Kit. (Really a cutting edge feature as compared to others in the market.) Read more about JS-Kit on a previously published post on Knowliz.

DISQUS:

doesn’t support OpenID. Visitors either need to provide email, use Facebook Connect, twitter or have a profile on DISQUS to leave a comment on any blog using DISQUS. (including Knowliz) – Users are dying to get support for OpenID. (Edit: DISQUS now supports OpenID.)
provides a cutting edge feature of pulling media reactions about an article in question from various social networks like twitter, friendfeed etc. A very cool feature provided by uberUV.
Visitor can leave a video comment using Seesmic and if they happen to have a DISQUS profile they can tweet about the comment on twitter.
Customer service is not that prompt. You need to keep searching wiki, blogs, forums to find answers if you are facing any problem. At best, you can send an email to help@disqus.com and/or include @Gianni and @disqus in the tweet on twitter to get their attention. Looks like @Gianni is the only person helping people with their problems.
Edit (08/26/09): doesn’t consider you the same person if you comment using DISQUS or Facebook Connect or twitter. I will say profile management is immature. With the latest release of Disqus Profile and Disqus Comments, it supports profile merging between Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and OpenID.
there is no way you can sync your comments with your native platform. Neither your old comments are brought into the system, nor comments made using DISQUS are synced. So you will loose all your comments made using DISQUS and you don’t get access to the old comments. No way to import comments into DISQUS. User including me are really impatient to see this feature. Edit (08/26/09): You can import comments from IntenseDebate and JS-Kit now. But Blogger Comment import is still not available.
Edit (08/26/09): DISQUS now supports Real Time comment and reaction updates using Narcissus theme. Read more about it on DISQUS blog.
But the service is improving overtime and doesn’t look like dying as compared to IntenseDebate as seen below which was acquired by Automattic last year.

IntenseDebate:

has many great features. But currently it looks like a service where people behind it have different priorities.
Comments don’t sync properly, though ideally as per the features mentioned on site they should.
supports OpenID and Facebook connect, but doesn’t support Twitter at this point.
lets you reply to a comment by email. Check out complete set of features at IntenseDebate.
supports plugins like PollDaddy polls, YouTube video and Seesmic video comments etc.

What people say about these on twitter?
No discussion is complete unless reaction has been captured from twitter. So lets have a look at what people say on twitter about these services:

Check out the twitter search results yourself – DISQUS, IntenseDebate, JS-Kit

One thing is for sure, these three are really competitive services and often makes it impossible to select any one. Because every service has some really cool set of features which other doesn’t. So as soon as you start using one, you start missing the other service. I can say that because I have tried all three.

For time being I am using DISQUS on Knowliz and hoping that they will start supporting OpenID and twitter soon and doesn’t consider me different person when I use my other identity.

I would love to hear from readers, what are there views about these services if they are using it on their blogs. And as a reader do you like leaving comments using DISQUS. How is your experience different from other blogs using other services.

Thanks to Khris for keeping us updated about latest offerings on JS-Kit.