DISQUS

I'm not sure why so many people seem intent on creating pop-up this and that on their sites.

From a site-owner perspective, it makes a lot of sense because it pads your time-on-site like crazy.

From a user perspective, it's annoying as hell. At least to me.

In the long run, it has to be about adding value to the user. We'll see if I'm in the minority or the majority, but I avoid sites with popup-links like the plague.

Hey Eric,

Good roundup - you've pulled a lot of resources together and packed them in a pretty condensed space. There are a lot of options for people who are just dipping their toes into social networks so having some recommendations can be really helpful.

Also, and I'd e-mail you this but I can't find your e-mail addy on the site - it looks like you're in Bellevue, so you should think about coming out to the Blog Bling Mixer in Redmond on October 23rd. Upcoming here: http://upcoming.yahoo.com/event/1105095/

I don't think there's ever been a question in my mind that Facebook is competing with FriendFeed.

The newsfeed has been the central attraction of FB's networking features (OK, OK, along with pictures and events) for some time, and I think FB is in a tough spot because disparate services like FriendFeed, FlickR, AIM, and Twitter could replace the centralized system much like the modern internet replaced AOL.

I was just talking with someone at FriendFeed about this at lunch today - how difficult it is to mesh the various conversations that are happening all over the place into one coherent narrative.

This is one of the things that Disqus is trying to do, I think, and it always seems to come back to data portability.

I'm starting to look at some location-based SMS/Twitter-like alternatives. I'm going to be posting about them soon once I gather some more impressions.

I think that the next step with this kind of service is going to be tied to geography. It seems like the obvious next layer to me.

I remember back when I used LiveJournal freemium was the model there, too. Paying users could do some funky things with RSS feeds, get more icons, and had more customization power.

It seems to work pretty well for LiveJournal, since it's still around.

I think Andrew is absolutely right that there's a surprising lack of communication between tech bloggers and the politicians who have, in many ways, just as much influence over the way the internet will be shaped over the next ten years.

I'm glad to see you take an interest in the space, and I hope you get some good conversations started. I'll be tuned in.

I'm sure MySpace will see some kind of jump with the profile redesign, if only because older users will come back to check it out, play around, and see if they like it again.

But as you pointed out, the real question is monetization, and MySpace (so far) is doing that way better than Facebook. But part of that success comes from the way that MySpace is laid out...I think they might be sacrificing a chunk of their revenue with a redesign.

The word newspaper is fast becoming an anachronism. What makes me sad is how few papers are really embracing the future of news, which I think means that all papers need to start doing two things immediately:

1. Create a good digital equivalent to "Subscription" in the online space, because loyal subscribers are FAR more valuable than the random Googler.

2. Make your content easily and readily available in any format you possibly can. Be on the Kindle. Be on Google Earth. Be on the blackberry. Be in special reader format on PCs and Macs and Tablets.

I see the NYT consistently trying to do these things when most companies are not, and that is why they are sitting on top of the world in online news.

I love the feature set that Disqus provides. I've been using them on my personal blog since they were in a sort of "quite beta" mode and I have to say that the spam protection has been phenomenal.

There are a few missing pieces to the puzzle - I don't have full and easy access to the comments and the comment metadata like I do in WordPress (if someone uses a swear word in a comment on my site, my only options are to leave it alone or to delete the whole comment, which is clunky).

And there's also the Google issue (Google sees Disqus comments at the disqus.com domain first, which makes the comments on your site duplicate content), which as far as I can tell has still not changed. It's not a deal killer for a personal blog, and I still use it myself, but it's something to consider if you're running a business blog or are being super-SEO conscious.