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:
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

