A Watershed Moment in the Blog Commenting Wars?

I've long considered blog comments to be one of the more fascinating social media startup battlegrounds in terms of the pace of innovation, the importance of the channel for distribution, and the lessons that can be learned by any company looking to build cross domain features.

From where I'm sitting, it appears that TechCrunch is evaluating the two major competing blog commenting services to be the default provider for TechCrunch comments: Disqus and JS-Kit.

Here's Michael Arringon on JS-Kit's new product ECHO:

this appears to be quite different. we’re going to spend some time with it next week and i may have additional thoughts. there is definitely some there there.

And in this post, TechCrunch is taking Disqus 3.0 for a spin.

Additionally, Seesmic video comments seem to have been ripped out of TechCrunch.

I'm not going to spend any time debating which of the two services is better - both are well backed companies with quality products and solid teams.  But this looks like a critical moment in the ongoing skirmish between JS-Kit and Disqus.

When Twitter unceremoniously dumped TinyURL for Bit.ly, the URL shortening wars were all but finished.  I don't expect TechCrunch's decision to carry quite the same impact, but there is no question that TechCrunch sits high on the distribution head for any company looking to secure blog commenting.  It does big traffic, it reaches virtually all earlier adopters / bloggers, and it will no doubt be a fabulous case study for whoever wins the business.  And TC's decision can't come soon enough - I don't know of a blog on the planet with more of an anon troll / commenter reputation problem than TechCrunch.

Additionally, the blog commenting space may very well be a winner take all situation.  As I wrote in an earlier post:

I believe that the blog commenting space has some serious network effects - the more blogs that adopt a certain, distributed blog comment provider, the more pressure there is on other blogs to switch over as not to silo themselves (and their commenters)... Because of these network effects, we may very well see a winner take all scenario emerge at some point in this space.  For this reason, today's skirmishes between the blog commenting contenders are worth following.

I've been following the blog commenting space for a while.  See here, here, here, here, here, and here

It will be interesting to see whether a nod from TechCrunch will be enough to tip this space in either Disqus' or JS-Kit's direction.

Here are some write-ups of Disqus V3: Disqus, TechCrunch, Mashable

And here are some write-ups of JS-Kit ECHO: JS-Kit, TechCrunch, Mashable

Comments

[Chris Saad]

Hi Lawrence, thanks for the great writeup.

First, disclosure: I work for JS-Kit.

I think Techcrunch is certainly an important property and we all love the team over there.

It's a big internet though and both companies are doing great work.

You may want to check our post here: http://blog.js-kit.com/2009/08/06/js-kit-echo-now-public-beta/

Especially this part:

"We are also happy to announce that Techcrunch is also going to begin rolling out Echo across their full network."

[lawrence]

Congrats Chris.

[VVS-Hedestoker]

Very nice, indeed.

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Nice write up. It will be interesting to see where this goes.

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[saibalaji]

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[Shane Onjuu]

HERE IS HOW JS-KIT SETS UP INSTALLATION. IS THIS A RECIPE FOR FAILURE OR WHAT. DON'T WASTE YOUR $12 BUCKS ON SOFTWARE DESIGNED BY THE MARX BROTHERS. WHAT A JOKE.

"Important: Leave the first comment - be sure to include your email address. This makes you the administrator of the site."

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[Rick]

Blog commenting is one way of increasing traffic to your site. That's the reason why there are lots of search engine optimizers using it. And it's pretty obvious.

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[affiliates]

Really good post, thanks for sharing.

[Acai berry]

I have used both the services JS-Kit and Disqus.I am satisfied with there performance.

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