[buro9]

Saw that yesterday, and I find it weird.

Twitter login and author info, standalone posts (submitted links/stories), and Disqus comments.

It feels broken already, using a strange mix of identity from one communication tool and the interface from another ✝.

What I like is that by connecting to Twitter and using the USV team's accounts as the source you get a great idea of the character and interests of the VC team and fund.

What I dislike is that by opening that up to anyone, the front-page just becomes a mini-HN and the insight into the character of the team is immediately diluted.

I also dislike that they use Twitter identity as the author for a conversation/debate, but then use Disqus as the medium for the debate. This has two effects:

1) It breaks the feel of the audience, people present themselves slightly differently to different groups, for example how many HN profile pages carry identical info on the individual's Twitter page?

2) It splits the debate across Twitter (where some will reply directly to the author) and Disqus.

I also find the blog post placement weird. All of the design hints on the blog posts (the grey squares to the right) make me think that they are stories, just "Hot" stories that are being featured. Not the case though, grey squares are blog posts that are masquerading as submitted stories (the design consistency of the block).

It's a weird experience overall. I liked the effect that was achieved early-on of gaining insight into what the team are following and debating, but it feels confusing. Ultimately I think the best thing to do is just to follow interesting people on Twitter to gain this insight, follow trends and interests.

✝ Should probably be pointed out that Twitter and Disqus are both portfolio companies of USV, and perhaps that's why they chose to do this weird mashup. Makes me wonder about the comedy gold or real opportunities that might be achieved from mashups of other portfolio company offerings. Code academy lessons that start where you left off, every time you get a cab using Hailo?

[fredwilson]

yeah, we've talked a lot about having two identity systems on usv.com. it is not ideal. but twitter doesn't have comments and disqus doesn't have the user base that twitter has, yet.

we are thinking about ways we can connect the two together in a tighter way to reduce some of this

as you point out, twitter and disqus are USV portfolio companies and we love using and supporting the products our portfolio companies make

[buro9]

Well, I think you are onto something in terms of making the Tweets and things you're interested in as an individual and as a team more visible.

On that... nail on the head.

It would be good if you could add a subtle addition of highlighting the things on the board in that a USV team member has contributed.

I think of VC firms as akin to a curator of interesting companies and opportunities, and that the sum of the portfolio reflects strongly the personal curation of the VCs. It'd be ace to see that shine through this new board.

The only conflict in that is whether you see this board as becoming more than USV, or giving an insight into USV. If the former than you'd be right to hesitate about highlighting the team's contributions, if the latter then do it already.

[stevenleeg]

I really like where you're going with this, and I honestly don't mind the use of twitter for authentication. You've already addressed the double sign-in thing, but I think my biggest issue has come from Disqus loading time.

At least 25% of the time that I've clicked on a comments link, I've had to sit around (after the page has loaded!) waiting for Disqus to load the comments (what I actually came to see). Sometimes they don't even load at all and I have to refresh the page. I completely understand that you guys love supporting your portfolio companies, but it seems like this type of site isn't quite as well suited for Disqus.

Just my two cents. I'm excited to see how you guys improve on this, and other than these issues I think you've done a great job so far.

[kmfrk]

You could invest in buro9's http://microco.sm and just use it for both those things instead. Problem solved. :)

[fredwilson]

checking it out now

[wslh]

Do you expect difference in the topics shared on USV to the ones on HN/reddit/etc?

I think you could benefit more from automatically analyzing links from many sources than to implement a sharing service yourself.

[fredwilson]

yes we do think it will be different

but only time will tell if we are right about that

[minimaxir]

I'm honestly surprised Twitter never came up with their own blog commenting system, a la Facebook and Google+. Although, Facebook neglected theirs, so I assume there might not be a demand.

[tvladeck]

I am too. I wrote up a brief note about how that might work here: http://tomvladeck.com/2013/10/04/twitter-conversation/

[btrautsc]

I always suspected that was the reason behind disqus.

we once tried to play in a corner of that space as well (focused more on expertise/ context), but it is clearly a chicken & egg situation.

[nonchalance]

How would that work? Wouldn't it essentially be replying to a master tweet from the website (assuming the website auto-tweeted new submissions, something that many sites do now)?

[minimaxir]

It could just be a comment thread 1 level deep, a la the current Twitter Conversations implementation. The website can prompt the user to syndicate the Tweet to their stream. (This is also how Facebook Comments work.)

[riffraff]

would you really use a commenting system on your site in which people can only reply with 140 characters?

[adventured]

For comments, it would cut off the display on Twitter at 140 characters, with a link to view the full comment on the external site. This would also encourage site owners to adopt the system, as Twitter would push tons of traffic.

[alexanderpease]

I wouldn't necessarily want every comment I write to become a tweet. Like this one, for example