One of the best things about modern blog software is the ability to leave comments. If you read something interesting, you can interact with the author about what they wrote. While most blog comment systems are two way (between the author and reader) a couple of third party companies have now made commenting much more interactive and conversational.
Disqus and Intense Debate have taken the WordPress blogging platform by storm, allowing people to comment on replies left by other readers in a multi threaded fashion. This allows for a conversation that is easy to follow and easy to respond to.
Here are a few highlights of each system…
Disqus: Allows you to connect conversations from Twitter, Facebook, and Digg. You can easily see the commenter’s profile and follow along with comments left on multiple blogs. The interface is clean and simple.
Intense Debate: Allows you to sign in with your Twitter or Facebook credentials. If you sign up with Intense Debate and respond on Intense Debate enabled sites, you’ll have a comment rating displayed next to your name. The more you comment, the higher your rating. This gives credibility to frequent commenters and allows blog owners to sort comments by their reputation score.
I personally use Intense Debate on this blog, and have found it works well. I really like the reputation system as you can easily identify regular commenters and also see what platform they are commenting from (Twitter, Facebook etc).
If you are a new blogger or wish to improve traffic to your blog it’s a good idea to start leaving comments and interacting with other blog sites in your genre. Signing into sites that use one of these systems will allow you to build your reputation as a commenter, and help drive conversations back to your blog or website.
Question: Have you used a comment system?