Disappointing, considering how ubiquitous Disqus is on American news sites. This means we'll be seeing more ads and promos on pages already packed with commercial messages.
FWIW, I rarely bother reading Disqus threads (glacial load times and poor sorting) and stopped contributing after many of my comments started being flagged as spam.
I already have Ghostery set to block Disqus both because of the slow load times and because 99% of the commentary on news websites and blogs is mind-polluting drivel. I struggle with clinical depression and ADD, and I've taken up using blockers and CSS restylers to hide the comment interface completely on most websites I visit because I reliazed I was only look at them to get an emotional kick similar to troll venom.
I think there's a much better business model that Ghostery (and many other vendros) have completely missed, but I'm pretty sure I would gt heavily flamed for proposing it.
Sigh...that should have said 'that Disqus (and many other vendors) have missed', not Ghostery, which is awesome and has a smart business model already. Sorry about that.
I am sure they will be pilloried for this, but I never begrudge a company trying to come up with a sustainable revenue model. Nobody ever thought "I sure wish I saw more ads online" and people gripe every time they pop up somewhere new, and yet everyone wants free services. So I say good luck brothers.
They were okay.. but I actually sent back some feedback to them by showing other "related" articles. The trashy ones. You know, showing a picture of someone groping their belly fat and mentioning some diet.
This was on a programmer's static blog compiled by octopress. I really felt like it lowered the quality of my experience reading the post, even though it was entirely Disqus's fault and not the author.
> Sponsored Comments let businesses deliver a message to the people they need to reach. A Sponsored Comment can use all types of media to get their point across, just like any other Disqus comment. But they’re not part of the discussion happening on that thread or community itself. That’s too disruptive.
So instead, they’re pinned to the top of the discussion environment where things are just getting started. It’s like movie previews.
So...why not call them by their old fashioned name: "ads"? I don't disapprove of ad-based models, but something seems a bit disingenuous to use the term "Comments" when they are not "comments" at all. Unless users are able to respond to them and not have their comments hidden.
It's hard to imagine advertisers being happy about users getting to attach negative comments onto the ads. And if those threads get to be a snark train, then that pushes all the regular discussion down even further. So either the "sponsored comment"-discussions are hidden, or advertisers AND site-users are inconvenienced.
> Unless users are able to respond to them and not have their comments hidden.
In the screenshots, there's a "Reply" button under the ad^W"Sponsored Comment". Want to take bets on how long it'll be until that goes away? I can see exactly what you described happening.
Let me say up front that I have a strong dislike for marketing and sales people. They surprise me sometimes, though.
FTA:
> "If we can complement the experience people already enjoy using Disqus ..."
> "So instead, they’re pinned to the top of the discussion environment where things are just getting started. It’s like movie previews. It’s not the thing you came for, but if done well, it adds a little bit to your experience ..."
I've learned over the years that some of these folks really truly believe this -- that they are making the world^Wweb a better place by displaying more ads in more places.
I don't remember the last time I left a comment on a site that uses Disqus but, seriously, who the "enjoy[s] using Disqus"? It's just not something that you "enjoy" doing, although the marketing/P.R. people would seem to believe that you do.
> I've learned over the years that some of these folks really truly believe this -- that they are making the world^Wweb a better place by displaying more ads in more places.
As Upton Sinclair (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Upton_Sinclair) used to say, "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it."
I do own a couple websites using disqus but I don't care too much about what comment makes it first. But for a personal blog, or a company that makes a lot of money, seeing people advertising in your comments would be a good excuse to start coding a home-made comment system.
A. Commenting at scale is hard. Believe me, I know. We run the largest Wordpress website out there, and decided to rewrite commenting inhouse. It's been... hard.
B. There are a handful of other good providers out there that hopefully this will give more business to.
Why is it difficult? I run a medium size website, with a custom threaded comment system. It receives 30,000 new comments a day on average. There has been zero issues, it's a simple comment table in the database with an index, and some standard queries. It's something you could literally code up in an afternoon.
Now, if you receive a hundred million comments a day, it'll be a little more complicated, but those sites are few and far between. At that point, you most likely have a budget for better hardware and specialized staff.
We wanted to own our data, wanted to maintain existing user accounts, don't care about federated commenting login, want to keep old comments on old stories, and didn't really feel like paying someone (or letting someone suddenly add ads to it).
Building it from scratch on top of the WP database made sense for us. The WP commenting code is some of the worst (and oldest) stuff in the entire codex.
> A. Commenting at scale is hard. Believe me, I know.
Other than just believing you, what makes it hard? I've had to scale comments on some very high traffic websites and it was pretty straight forward. Unless it's a complex comment system, but then you wouldn't use Disqus anyway.
Building an auth system, user accounts, comment submission, moderation, and threading, then rendering all of that out is more work than it seems. All of the dynamic-ish stuff (seeing your comment immediately, noting your comments) has to be carefully thought out. Right now commenting takes half our app load, and it's pretty tightly written.
How do you propose Disqus earn revenue/stay in business. There's little incentive for publishes to pay for a commenting platform when they could just go back to using a shitty internal solution. (Although, admittedly, some publishers do pay discuss for enterprise solutions, but if that were more lucrative than ads, why would the bother with ads?)
I never cease to be amazed by people who bitch about seeing ads within a product/service they use for free. Someone has to pay for this.
Ads are annoying. People bitch about annoyances. No wonder there.
"Someone has to pay for this" is the wrong attitude. Either the service provider provides the service or he doesn't. If I'm not in a contract to pay them, I don't assume responsibility for paying anything...
Honestly I think this is promising. The format is not "shady" or disruptive, and the company seems to have a good understanding that adds done poorly can be damaging.
FWIW, I rarely bother reading Disqus threads (glacial load times and poor sorting) and stopped contributing after many of my comments started being flagged as spam.