I previously suggested that one of the primary reasons that I liked Disqus was that comments posted by users showed up in FriendFeed. Theoretically, I could import a feed of comments on my site but this way, the comment will show up twice: once from my site and once in the user’s feed. Is there any other benefit to using Disqus? Well, one other feature that I find to be useful is threaded comments.

Additionally there is supposedly better spam filters. I have yet to test the system for long enough to know but I’m guessing the company can back up their claims. Finally, being able to reply to the comments via mobile makes things a heck of a lot easier for me. While I could have logged into wordpress and then commented on my site previously, this service makes things quick and easy.

Aside from that I have yet to figure out any other reasons to add Disqus. It has a nice design and it has worked so far so I’m sticking with it for now. Have you used Disqus? Is there any disadvantages of the service? Are there any benefits that I’m missing here?

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Over the past few days I have been spending more time experimenting with FriendFeed given Twitter’s downtime. The service has been growing on me and one thing that I’ve noticed is that when people post a comment on my blog it doesn’t show up in FriendFeed but when they post a comment on Disqus it does because Disqus is a supported service on the site. While I won’t spend time discussing why I now use FriendFeed in this post, the one thing I will say is that I enjoy conversing with this small hyper-connected group of individuals who I barely know aside from the comments we share on a daily basis.

Not having peoples’ comments show up in FriendFeed means a lost opportunity for promotion of my site. As such I am slowly being forced into integrating Disqus into my blog. While I haven’t made the change yet, I’m extremely likely to make the shift when the new version of the platform is released. While FriendFeed is one of the few sites that provide support for Disqus postings, my guess is that this trend will continue and we could soon see integration on sites like Facebook which also provide newsfeed functionality.

While Disqus is still an extremely early-stage service, it appears that they are gaining substantial traction and slowly one blog after the other that I use is integrating it into their site. I’m being a resistor to change because I think it will help improve the service for the time being. Additionally, the first version of a product tends to have a number of flaws (take the iPhone for example).

The most interesting thing about Disqus is that the benefits could soon outweigh the cons and the company will have succeeded in “out opening” my blog comments. It’s similar to the battle taking place between OpenSocial and Facebook but on a much smaller scale. Disqus is growing one blog at a time rather than one social network at a time. I can envision similar functionality from utilities on Facebook and other social networks including image uploading and wall postings.

The second that those features are opened on social networks is the exact moment that FriendFeed will have “out opened” social networks but that conversation should be saved for another time. For now, I have come to realize that the Disqus will soon succeed at forcing me on to their platform. I have no other option.

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My thoughts are that video commenting provides a great alternative for those that prefer to use video instead of text. If that wasn’t the most obvious response, I don’t know what is. Loren Feldman is a good example of somebody that benefits from video comments. YouTube is already the center of video commenting and now it is extending to blogs. We will continue to see more written comments than video comments on blogs though.

Some people communicate more effectively through video and some people communicate more effectively for writing. That’s the difference between bloggers and vloggers. I unfortunately have not taken advantage of Disqus because for some reason I like owning the comments on my blog. Call me crazy but it’s a personal preference. Disqus is a great way to get comments up and running on your site though and I have a feeling that it may spread the same way MyBlogLog did, I’m just not one of the users for the time being.

Do you think video comments are mainstream? Have you been using them at all? Have you or would you install Disqus on your own site?

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