The headline says a lot. But let me start off by writing this - I like a lot of what Intense Debate is doing… they’re a Boulder company (part of the Techstars incubator program), and as far as I’ve seen, they’re good guys. They’ve gotten some good attention, got acquired by Automattic, and even do a decent job with support (follow @mkoening to see what I mean). There’s a lot to like.
And I do want to like them. I want threaded comments to work, whether they come from Intense Debate, from their main competition, Disqus, or from someone else altogether. The point of comments in general is to use one-on-one interaction to build a community around your blog - it only makes sense to build the comment structure to reflect (and encourage) that.
However, while I want threaded comments to work, I’m seeing that the reality of an effective system for having them might be a little way off. The recent case of my blog redesign serves as good enough evidence why. Here’s the story:
I used Intense Debate here, for the 4 or so months before the recent redesign. I liked the system, I liked how it fit into my style, and I didn’t ask it to do a lot. When I redid the blog, though, I needed to some different things - I wanted a cleaner look, and I wanted the plugin to appear only on pages where comments were enabled (which seems like a valid request).
I got in touch with Michael, and though he was helpful, it became clear to me that I was on my own - I would have to do the customizations myself. With my own code. Which is fine, really… I don’t mind that too much. But I also didn’t want to spend a ton of time on it. So I decided to go with a standard system.
The problem with that, I learned, was that my comments from the last few months weren’t stored with my blog content, but in the Intense Debate system. They were gone. If I wanted them back, I had to reactivate Intense Debate, import them, then Deactivate it again. After 2 plugin upgrades and 8 hours of importing (which was still in progress at that point), I gave up. I moved on, without my comments in tow, which is why you don’t see any on any post for the last few months (which sucks).
To me, that’s an Intense Debate FAIL. I’m ok, albeit bummed, with the fact that their user interface is so inflexible. But the fact that they basically own your content, and make you go through that interface to get it back, is just silly.
Until they make the system and its workings more accessible to the average blogger (a person who is not going to spend a day custom-coding their commenting system to make sure it fits their blog design), Intense Debate is going to have problems making the jump from early adopters to universally adopted.
Maybe Disqus can do better. Or maybe, with Wordpress integration, Intense Debate can do better. Maybe it’ll be someone new. Either way though, I hope it happens.
YOUR INPUT: what do you think about threaded comments, and about the future of the companies that are pushing them? Will one emerge? What will it take for that to happen?
{ 9 comments… read them below or add one }
I think what you’re running up against is a challenge that a lot of startups have, especially early stage. There is no perfect tool for everyone. My experience at HyperSites really illustrates this beautifully. We have customers that want to sync inventory, users, databases, and all kinds of other stuff with their private systems. Well, we don’t do that. It isn’t something that our “target market” wants, just a customer here or there. That isn’t to say that one day we won’t have systems for it, but we’re focusing on doing things that the majority of our customers want. If the majority of their customers request theming and customization the way *you* see it, I’m sure they’ll do it. That said, you clearly have the ability to do things yourself, where maybe their target market (I’ve not consulted with them of course) is people that want a simple solution for social, threaded, commenting. I use IntenseDebate on my blog and love it. I could have built a comment system in HyperSites even, but I wouldn’t have built the complete functionality of IntenseDebate. Have a good one.
MICHAEL: You make a great point about early stage startups, and about users - it’s easy for people to sit back and say what they want, a lot harder for a group of guys with limited resources to make it happen. And even if they can make it happen, they need to make sure they’re making the right things happen. No doubt.
That’s why here, I made an effort not to belabor the point about the Intense Debate FAIL too much, but rather, use it to spark a convo on threaded comments as a whole. I hope I didn’t FAIL in that myself.
I hope you have a real good one too. Happy New Year.
An issue that Disqus (and others like us) has to face is balancing simplicity versus power.
Most users are satisfied with some of the comment system theme options we have out of the box. Advance users who care deeply about their design have the option to customize CSS. I agree that we can always offer more choices and easier ways to skin, and we are indeed going to be working on that.
DANIEL: Thanks for stopping by, man… it speaks well for Disqus.
As for the balance between simplicity and power… I completely get you. My point wasn’t that you or Intense Debate aren’t exactly where you should be. My point was that neither of you are quite there yet.
To get there, you’ll have to offer a product that’s not only simple and powerful, but also versatile - something that will offer top-notch customized performance, without making normal users customize it themselves. And of course, something that doesn’t hide valuable content.
It sounds like you have a great start, and it sounds like you’re on your way, as are a couple other people. It’ll definitely be fun to see it all plays out.
Of course, let me know if I can help in any way.
From what I understand, your issue is the exact reason why Andrew Hyde stopped using ID as well.
I’m also a bit surprised (dismayed?) that no one from ID has responded yet. Disqus has…um….discussed their take.
ID? Hello?
JARED: Yeah, I talked briefly with Andrew Hyde about it the other day, but I didn’t press. Maybe I will the next time I see him (or maybe he can drop by here).
To be fair on Intense Debate, I talked to Michal today (to let him know about the post), and he’s up in Vail, without much Internet access. I’m sure he’s having a good time, and I’m sure he’ll stop by to leave some input at some point.
It does speak well to Disqus (and not so well, at least so far, to Intense Debate). But I think he’ll show, and I think the blog’s not big enough to be that big a problem (so far).
I’ll be curious to see what he can add.
Sorry that I’m late to the party. Brian, thanks for the heads-up - we’re always interested in valuable feedback.
Michael hit the nail on the head in his comment above. The ultimate goal is to create the perfect out of the box comment system that fits everyone’s design needs. IntenseDebate comments need to integrate nicely with any number of customized themes, widgets and other blog components, and it needs to be done easily - we’re still getting there, but it’s a hell of a challenge! Currently we provide CSS documentation for advanced customization. You can expect our documentation to become more detailed along with more customization and design options in the future.
I’m sorry to hear that you ran into issues importing your comments back into WordPress. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe you were making the switch from our old plugin to our latest one which features data sync. This may get a little confusing since we’re talking about two different plugin versions that functioned differently. There currently is an issue exporting comments made in IntenseDebate using the old WordPress plugin, and we’re working on correcting this. The delay you encountered with your data sync during your plugin upgrade was a bug that has since been fixed. Please feel free to give it another try.
Just to clarify, our new plugin copies every comment made in IntenseDebate over to your servers so that your comments are in both WordPress and IntenseDebate. The two comment systems run in parallel, so comments made in WordPress are copied to IntenseDebate as well. Once your comments are synced, all you have to do is deactivate the plugin to uninstall and you’ll still have all of your comments.
I’m not sure if you’re interested, but I’d love it if you gave IntenseDebate another shot. My door is always open so of course feel free to give me a shout with any questions.
MICHAEL(2): Hey man - thanks for stopping by, and thanks for providing a little bit more context through which to view Intense Debate.
Thanks, too, for the offer for help. I’m not sure if I’ll use ID again (I imagine I will)… but regardless, I’m always impressed with your personal, friendly, and responsive service. You’re really doing some good stuff over there.
And more than anything, that’s worth noting. The point of this post was never to bash or to heckle - I just wanted to bring up issues I figured were holding threaded comments back.
In other words, all I’m saying is that I don’t think we’re quite there yet, and to get there, companies like yours have to keep going forward (and keep an eye on developing their community of users as they do so).
Once again, I see that you guys are on the right track. Seems like Disqus is too. Should be fun. Everyone wins.
I definitely give IntenseDebate a fail! I have had nothing but problems since I installed the s/w (lost comments, comments from other blogs, now no comments on new posts). Michael Koenig et al seem to be of no help, they asked me for my blog template, sent back a changed version which still left me stuck with IntenseDebate. All I want right now is to get IntenseDebate off my blog, but even that seems to be too much for their “support” department. Do yourself a favor and avoid ID like the plague…it just is <i>not</i> a reliable piece of s/w and they offer minimal support.