DISQUS

Eric,

Great piece.

As Jai pointed out there is a lot of spamming going on with the managed offer platforms as well. Perhaps topic for another article.

-jitendra

Very cool...

One thing though that concerns me about facebook connect is the scope for foul play.

A rouge site can easily steal users facebook credentials by showing a fake login screen that looks like facebook screen.

thanks, Jitendra

Congrats...Keep up the good work.

Jitendra
SezWho

Hey Duncan,

Jitendra from Sezwho here.

Thanks for the mention.

Both ID and Disqus are good services but SezWho has a different take.

With Sezwho your comments stay in your system so there are no downtime issues etc...We are really not a comment management system (no spam filtering, comment serving, etc.) instead we are profile service that just given sites access to a huge community without any of the downsides of having content content elsewhere.

BTW, check out our new templates when you get a chance.

Thanks, Jitendra

Yeah Chris...Reputation is another huge piece of the puzzle here and a food reputation management system can and does (as is the case with SezWho) facilitate conversations by setting up the right incentives for readers, writes and site owners.

thanks, Jitendra

Craig,

Thanks for you comment.

Search based advertising is great because it combines motivation and context in a sweet opportunity. But saying that Search would be the predominant model is like saying that 411 or yellow page listings were the only way to discover people/businesses in pre-internet days. Its misses the value of the social networks and mis-characterizes the way we really discover content.

In terms of the value of universal profiles, I tend to believe that users (especially the newer generation) are not only willing but also want to take credit for their participation across different mediums. If there is a good subject bases segmentation of conversations and users have the control over their profiles, universal profiles can be a very important component of the solution.

thanks, Jitendra

Andrew,

We leave the comment management to the blog and other social media platforms. We provide ratings, reputation and universal profile service..That being said, we do provide an out of the box threaded comment template. Take a look at CrunchGear that keeps you comments in your own repository and avoids any SEO implications.

Thanks,
Jitendra

Hey Adam,

How are you?

Our take on it

http://blog.sezwho.com/blog/2008/09/24/conversa...

-jitendra

Monica,

also the double avatars is because of Gravatar and Sezwho avatars both showing up. You can turn off either of these avatars to address the issue you are having.

Thanks, Jitendra

<abbr>Jitendras last blog post..Slow updates on Blogger Blogs</abbr>

Hey,

Thanks for the mention and sorry to see you have issues with SezWho.

We are really looking to engage the community at blogs by providing context and people based content discovery around comments. This should certainly add to the activity on your site and generate additional page views.

We love feedback from the user so let us know if there is anything we can do to add to the product etc.

Thanks, Jitendra
SezWho (jitendra@sezwho.com)

Hey,

Jitendra from Sezwho here...Thanks for the mention and welcome to the community.

We did indeed have a few problems with Blogger initially (our service on Blogger is in Beta state) but we are sorting through all these issues and are about to introduce a new approach for blogger layout that should address things.

In any case, let us know if any of you run into any issues with the service at support@sezwho.com

Thanks, Jitendra

R Mak,

Not taken negatively at all...

Users keep us on our toes and we have and will respond with solutions really fast...Keep an eye out for a new solution for the blogger look/feel and slow down issues today.

Thanks,
Jitendra

To address the issue with the slowness of the blogs, we are adding the option to have local CSS and JS for your sites. This will make sure that site are not dependent on SezWho for loading time. On Blogger, we have had a few issues with the layout and to address it we are implementing a template based solution for it which should be available soon. This will enable full customization.

Also please feel free to send us emails at support@sezwho.com for any slowdowns etc. and we will be happy to investigate. Typically we take about 30ms to load the CSS and about 50ms for the js. The blogger users see the slowdown as UI is shown dynamically, only after most of the page is loaded and depending on the number of widgets that might be slowed down. So this is really a perception issue…The template based approach will fix that problem as well.

Hey, Jitendra from SezWho here:


To address the issue with the slowness of the blogs, we are adding the option to have local CSS and JS for your sites. This will make sure that site are not dependent on SezWho for loading time. On Blogger, we have had a few issues with the layout and to address it we are implementing a template based solution for it which should be available soon. This will enable full customization.

Also please feel free to send us emails at support@sezwho.com for any slowdowns etc. and we will be happy to investigate. Typically we take about 30ms to load the CSS and about 50ms for the js. The blogger users see the slowdown as UI is shown dynamically, only after most of the page is loaded and depending on the number of widgets that might be slowed down. So this is really a perception issue...The template based approach will fix that problem as well.

Also there should be no issues with Google related to SezWho..SezWho displays the connections between blogs based on comments and commentets on demand…It does not effect the crawling of the site and as such there should be no penalties associated with it.

Hope this clears things up.

Thanks, Jitendra

R Mak,

Jitendra from SezWho here...

There should be no issues with Google related to SezWho..SezWho displays the connections between blogs based on comments and commentets on demand...It does not effect the crawling of the site and as such there should be no penalties associated with it.

Thanks,
Jitendra

Andy,

Good points...BTW SezWho also provides ability to track your comment within FF if one wants. (see http://www.sezwho.com/blog/2008/05/26/how-to-ge...)

Duncan,

Thanks for the mention. We believe that taking comments out of the context of the conversation really does not help the conversation...instead it adds to the noise. To reduce the noise what is needed is to add more context to the place where the content is being created and consumed...This is the reason why SezWho provides a service that keeps the content where it is created and consumed. As a result with our approach, site owners don't have to worry about getting their content back with-in their system if they are unhappy with a service, and they don't have to worry about indexing/double-indexing issues etc. irrespective of the platform they are using.

That is my 2 cents worth :-)
-jitendra

Check out SezWho...It provides a better reputation and context service without taking over your content...

Thanks, Jitendra

Louis,

Interesting point...I tend to believe that blog comments and conversation on other social sites like forums, wikis etc. are all part of conversation...but for I do believe that the context for the blog comments comes from the post and taking them out can really be confusing...

my 2 cents :-)

-jitendra

Paul, thanks for the post...Tejit is back up now.

Just to clarify, SezWho is a universal profile service for the social web that helps engage your community and to discover content.

We don't just track comments but we work with posts as well as platforms such as forums/bulleting boards etc. such as VBulleting and phpBB etc.

Thanks, Jitendra

Palin,

Jitendra from SezWho here.

Great post...Indeed we are not a comment replacement system so the comment data stays within your system so there are no SEO issues/no ownership issues/no locking data in a walled garden. We are a universal profile service that just adds context and content discovery features to social conversations.

Thanks for the mention...and we are working on the improved design of the profile page.

-Jitendra

Hey Jitendra from SezWho here...Keep SezWho in mind as well..We provide universal profile services without taking over your comments data and locking them in a walled garden...So there are no SEO/ownership impliations.

Thanks, Jitendra

Duncan, That is certainly an improvement...you might want to make sure that double indexing of content is not an issue with Google...And you have a strategy in place to reimport your comments in case you need to avoid data lock-in...Thanks, Jitendra

Hey Duncan, Jitendra from SezWho here...Losing control of ones comments (and SEO benefits and freshness etc. of your site - important for Google or TechMeme etc.) is really not needed to get all the community/threading features provided by Disqus. SezWho provides all the community/context services without taking over your content...In addition there are a number of other plugins that will replicate the other features of a comment replacement system without replacing your comments (E.g. Brian Threaded comments for threaded discussion etc.)... My 2 cents.

Thanks, Jitendra

Keif,

Thanks for being fair and open ... and for bringing up the interesting issue of privacy.

Our view is that when somebody participates in a PUBLIC discussion the default should be non-anonymity (as is the case with real-life conversations) but if somebody wanted to be not identitified, that should be able to go anonymous...Either way, by providing the appropriate context and information about the choices a user has made, really helps improve the conversationa and to engage the community. In fact, we have seen the community interactions more than double with SezWho in the picture as more people are commenting and rating with the additional reputational incentives.

Try out the service and let me know what you think (we fully supported Brian's threaded comments)...Check out

http://www.howtospoter.com/web-20/blogging-web-...

for an example. Let me know if you have any questions or feedback.

Thanks, Jitendra

Keif,

Jitendra from SezWho here...Thanks for the mention.

I want to slightly disagree with you on the SezWho being similar to Disqus...We are infact different in the sense that SezWho is not a comment management service. We infact believe that the comments belong with the blog owners and should be stored with blog content so that there are no -ve SEO/downtime implications etc.

We are a social context service that provides added context to the conversations across all social sites (forums, blog - both posts and comments, wikis etc.).

In terms of Privacy, we provide full control to the users over their profiles - they can hide/show what ever elements they want in their profiles or hide it altogether.

Let me know what you think.

Thanks, Jitendra