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August 7, 2007

Intense Debate Soups Up Your Blog Comments

Nick Gonzalez

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intensedebatelogo.pngColorado-based startup incubator TechStars has launched their second company today, Intense Debate. We covered TechStar’s first company, MadKast, earlier this week.

Intense Debate is a souped-up blog commenting system that adds a lot of features for publishers and commenters alike. Installing the plug-in on your blog (WordPress, Blogger, and TypePad) adds threading, comment analytics, bulk comment moderation across all your blogs, user reputation, and comment aggregation. You can test out the system on the TechStars blog, but you’ll have to apply to the private beta if you want to install it on your own.

idcommentsnap.pngThreaded comments are nothing new and few blogs attract enough comments to make analytics a necessity. However, the system really shines when it comes to features for individual commenters.

While you can still leave anonymous comments, signing up for an account turns your commenting into a mini-blogging platform. The system lets you establish a reputation, link a profile, make friends, and syndicate your comments. Since all the accounts are on Intense Debate, it tracks your activity across any enabled blog. The networking benefit of the plug-in would make it a great addition to a blog network like Wordpress.com.

Your profile consists of an optional photo, links to other social media profiles, your recent comments, and friends. You can see David Cohen’s profile here. Having a profile lets other users easily follow your comments over all or on a specific blog via RSS. Your reputation is based on the number of comments you’ve made and the quality of those comments as voted on by the other users.

Intense Debate competes for space on your blog with several other commenting systems, such as JS-Kit, SezWho, and Tangler. JS-Kit lets you add ratings and comments easily with a couple lines of code, but doesn’t have a user profile system. SezWho has a very similar commenting system that works for Wordpress and Movable Type. Tangler has a soon-to-be released embeddable commenting widget that brings its real time forum system to your blog. CoComment has a similar system, but tracks comments across any blog without requiring a plug-in.

The system provides a lot of value for prolific commenters. In fact, a lot of TechCrunch commenters have already established their own following and reputations. A system like this provides the infrastructure to make them explicit. Yet it may be a tough sell for larger blogs who want to own their user data.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 7th, 2007 at 3:52 pm and is filed under Company & Product Profiles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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Comments

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  1. Andrew Pass

    August 7th, 2007 at 4:05 pm

    Nick, Your last comment indicates why a company like IntenseDebate might have a hard time taking off. Smaller blogs likely won’t think they have the need for the tool. Larger blogs want to own their own user data. Your point that the tool will track a single commenter’s comments across blogs makes sense. But, this will only work if enough blogs buy into it. It’ll be hard to attract a large enough base of blogs so that other bloggers feel a compulsion to join.

    Just a thought.
    Check out: http://www.pass-ed.com/Living-Textbook.html

  2. alex

    August 7th, 2007 at 4:06 pm

    A simple yet innovative idea.

    I like this, now I just wish my blog got enough comments to put it to it’s true use ;).

  3. Jeremy Wright

    August 7th, 2007 at 4:08 pm

    Just as a note, Wordpress.com is *not* a blog network. It’s a blog hosting platform, certainly, and a decent one at that. But there’s no network there.

  4. Josh

    August 7th, 2007 at 4:09 pm

    Thanks, Nick. We have some VERY exciting things happening.

    To address the concern over user data, publishers are free to import and export comments as they please. So, as quickly as you accumulate comments, you can save them too. We want to partner with publishers not trick them out of data. If anyone has any criticism, feel free. I want to be as open as I can.

  5. Political Grind

    August 7th, 2007 at 4:16 pm

    We have been using the Intense Debate comment system for about a week now and have been pretty impressed. Over the passed there have been many great updates (Widgets being one feature added in the last few days).

    Our blog doesn’t get a ton of traffic, but a tool like this is far better than the built in wordpress comments. The comments are now much easier to read, and the threaded feature is fantastic for following a discussion.

    One feature which I have requested; which I think Jon is working on, is recent comments for specific blogs (They already have 2 widgets that show recent 5 comments across all of ID and another Widget that shows the last 5 comments which you made on all ID blogs).

  6. Political Grind

    August 7th, 2007 at 4:18 pm

    oops, meant to say “Over the past Week….” in the first paragraph.

  7. Alaska Miller

    August 7th, 2007 at 4:25 pm

    Someone should take the Twitter API and remash it as a comment system. If I can only see 140 characters of you stupid people’s comments, I would be so much more happier.

  8. Stix

    August 7th, 2007 at 4:28 pm

    I think this will revolutionize the blogosphere for the better. You can see who is commneting on your blog and see if their trolls or spammers because of user ratings. Also, you can follow discussions easier because you can just track someone’s post or a specific post. Ihave it on my blog right now, but have had a little bit of a glitch, but that ies why they are testing it right now. My blog doens;t get a lot of comments, but this will probably attract more people to visit and keep in touch and have a better debate on a whole bunch of different subjects.

  9. Tim

    August 7th, 2007 at 4:33 pm

    Sounds very interesting. I like the comment tracking options available to myself as a common commenter here.

    Now I can show off to all my friends in one place how many useless posts I leave on TechCrunch everyday. =^)

  10. Josh Buckley

    August 7th, 2007 at 4:41 pm

    I think this is going to be very big.

  11. Kevin

    August 7th, 2007 at 4:50 pm

    So is TC going to install something like this? God knows the Techcrunch comments could use a little help.

  12. Josh

    August 7th, 2007 at 4:52 pm

    Thx, Josh. We think so too. Do you have any constructive feedback?

  13. Micah Baldwin

    August 7th, 2007 at 5:08 pm

    I am pretty new to the blogging world, and one of the things that I keep reading about is how blogs are supposed to be conversations. In truth, most blogs are reminiscent of standing on a cliff and yelling your thoughts into the coming wind.

    Comments are what create the conversation. What I like about Intense Debate is that they encourage conversation since it is almost like Twitter/IM in that you can reply to a specific comment or post in a threaded format. For a site like TechCrunch or any content driven publisher, so often the conversation continues long after the blog post itself has gone stale.

    Add that to the ability to track specific people, I really see ID becoming a way to help drive traffic to my blog. People want to know where the top bloggers are commenting, etc.

    The data that can be collected about what type of people are reading/interacting with your blog can be invaluable for marketers (yes, I am a dirty marketer).

    And, for now at least, its not bad that they are in startup mode, so when I needed help get ID running correctly on my blog, the ID team was there at 1am to help me out. Focusing on customer service prior to a public beta is pretty impressive.

    Also, to be fair, there are a LOT of kinks left to be ironed out. But it works in alpha, and what they have accomplished so far rocks. I am excited to have it installed and running on my blog.

  14. Drew Meyers

    August 7th, 2007 at 5:35 pm

    MyBlogLog should be doing this. Maybe Yahoo! can buy this company and integrate it w/ mbl?

  15. TechDumpster (living in First Life)

    August 7th, 2007 at 5:46 pm

    The concept itself is interesting, but given that the founders already failed in debating in previous posts on TechCrunch, it makes me wonder how much they really understand the heavy commenter market.

    The UI needs a lot of work too. It’s almost like there’s too much whitespace and the comments are too spread out. The amount of code that went into creating this is trivial as is IntenseDebate itself. This isn’t a business and it’s barely a product. It’s a little feature that with a lot of work and luck could be worth about $20.

  16. Dave

    August 7th, 2007 at 5:47 pm

    I love the idea (actually thought of it a while back)…just could not figure out how to make money from it…which is a pretty important factor (to me) when deciding to build something out.

  17. Nick Gonzalez

    August 7th, 2007 at 6:01 pm

    @Jeremy Wright - not a network in the sense of b5, but in the sense of Blogger. A widget like this could add value to their hosted accounts. They’ve implemented a similar plug-in deal with Snap.

    @Alaksa - Hah

  18. TechDumpster (living in First Life)

    August 7th, 2007 at 6:01 pm

    You can’t make money on it. The universe of intense commenters is tiny.

    IntenseDebate owned: http://techdumpster.com/2007/0.....are-tense/

  19. Wes

    August 7th, 2007 at 6:04 pm

    These are very good features to add to comments esp. the threaded comments bit. I have always liked threaded comments and its one of first features that I added to my own blogs but I like the fact you can collapse threaded comments with Intense debate which I think is a handy feature.

    I actually think that the collapsing should be extended to all levels on the thread(not just from the root comment) and thats something I think could be achieved through clever use of CSS.

  20. Robert Dewey

    August 7th, 2007 at 6:05 pm

    I’ll be watching this Josh - looks like you’re off to a great start… I remember when Intense Debate was a simple forum for arguing politics :)

    Good luck - perhaps Yahoo! is watching ;)

  21. Josh

    August 7th, 2007 at 6:27 pm

    Hi Robert, yep. Thx for the support.

    @wes…I am going to contact you regarding feedback to see if you have any more recommendations.

  22. Scott

    August 7th, 2007 at 6:36 pm

    On the user data side, what if I have a site that all ready has a username/password account setup? How could I integrate that with this hosted service? It would be great if there was a backend account setup api. I would definitely use this if that was there.

  23. Jordan

    August 7th, 2007 at 7:19 pm

    My first question is: does it use OpenID? If this tool is supposed to be about building trust with the content owners, then distancing themselves from holding the only key would help.

    Second: how does this mesh into native skins/templates? Is it just transparent to a blog’s theme?

  24. Isaac Keyet

    August 7th, 2007 at 7:27 pm

    Hi, this Isaac Keyet, designer of Intense Debate.

    @Jordan: Currently the skin does not adapt to the blogging template, as it’s the first and official skin we’ve made. In the future we’re planning on creating such a skin, that should potentially disguise itself to fit any blog. Shortly we’ll also introduce blog-based styling, so if you’re a CSS freak you could easily put together your own stylesheet to fit nicely with the content.

  25. Zoli Erdos

    August 7th, 2007 at 7:33 pm

    C’mon, Dumpster, or Jay or whoever you are,

    This isn’t about Intense Debate - you’re piggybacking on them to tout your new site dumpster…    Let’s see if it will outlast Arrringtonsucks.com, ShitCrunch, TechCrush … have I missed something?
    :-)

  26. Zoli Erdos

    August 7th, 2007 at 7:35 pm

    Ahh, and I’m following this thread using co.mments sinceI don’t have Intense Debate access yet …

  27. Brian Wynne Williams

    August 7th, 2007 at 8:22 pm

    Good write-up, Nick.

    Glad to see this service go up — it’s a good start in an area that could certainly use more help. While I agree with Andrew’s comment about smaller blogs not having enough comments to need a service like this, I think one of the nice elements of it is that it will actually encourage more comments — even on smaller blogs.

    Plug this into TechCrunch. It will help your readers as much as it will your commenters.

  28. Josh

    August 7th, 2007 at 8:30 pm

    @jordan

    currently we dont use openid. not because it isnt a good idea, but for two reasons. one, we would like our users to dictate what they want us to use. two, we have been so busy building our site that considering openid has not been at the top of our list.

  29. Political Grind

    August 7th, 2007 at 8:31 pm

    @Brian Wynne Williams

    I agree… Even with smaller blogs, like mine, it makes reading the comments so much easier. The last few posts only 8 comments, 25 comments, and one on the post that was just made… Intense Debate has helped a ton. The design and structure make the experience that much better.

    Also, zero spam comments…. usually askimet catches 1000/day

    They are in beta, so there will be improvements/bug fixes as development continues.

  30. Jordan

    August 7th, 2007 at 8:41 pm

    Josh,

    This is a chicken-before-the-egg quandry. If no one adopts the OpenID, then not enough people are going to find out about it and no one will adopt it. How can people find out about it if everyone waits for someone else to implement it? Why not implement it because it’s a good idea, and give people the option of your login, or OpenID? Not only will you earn the respect of the growing OpenID community, but you’ll also be doing a service in promoting the service.

  31. Josh

    August 7th, 2007 at 9:34 pm

    Jordan,
    I am not disagreeing with you nor am I saying that we will never use OpenID. We have just considered our functionality the number one priority.

    I will say because of your suggestion it is on our radar screen and you do make good points.

  32. Jordan

    August 7th, 2007 at 10:21 pm

    Good to know!

  33. TechDumpster (living in First Life)

    August 7th, 2007 at 10:24 pm

    @ 25 Zoli

    I actually respect Josh from IntenseDebate. We’ve had a nice exchange about some ideas to improve their marketability and even though my suggestions may be total b.s., I respect him for listening.

    As for the TechDumpster blog, our goal is just to tone down the hysteria a bit. Some people are trying to be aspirational (Michael Arrington), while others are actually lost (Scoble, Duncan Riley, Y Combinator, etc.).

  34. Rajeev

    August 8th, 2007 at 12:22 am

    Reminds me of Haloscan…better UI and integration though.

  35. DarkUFO

    August 8th, 2007 at 2:37 am

    Hi Josh,

    Great idea and looks great. A couple of questions.

    1) Some of my posts on my blog get over 400+ comments, how well does this scale?

    2) Will my existing (blogger) users be required to create New ID’s? if not is there a way to link to existing blogger accounts?

  36. Tish Grier

    August 8th, 2007 at 6:08 am

    Comments are such a burden that we now need an app to help us deal with comments? Wow. the world of tech is so redundant….considering only 10% of all blog lurkers leave comments (and that lots of the blogosphere doesn’t get such beaucoup comments to need an additional monitoring app), I’m not sure that a new app will compel people to be more social. Or is it just that the app is for the compulsively social? and then we’ll eventually need some sort of app to get over the addiction to commenting apps…

  37. David Mackey

    August 8th, 2007 at 5:36 pm

    I like the idea. If they can get WordPress to add them as a default feature they would be huge.

  38. Jessica

    August 11th, 2007 at 1:07 pm

    If no one adopts the OpenID, then not enough people are going to find out about it and no one will adopt it, I’m not sure that a new app will compel people to be more social, our goal is just to tone down the hysteria a bit, It’s almost like there’s too much whitespace and the comments are too spread out. The amount of code that went into creating this is trivial as is IntenseDebate itself.

  39. Tony

    August 24th, 2007 at 7:16 pm

    Looking for help setting up wordpress at http://www.askhelpdesq.com especially with auto-update feature. (So daily calendar of new items can be imported). Thanks.

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