We’re Still Building Disqus
I grew up on Internet forums. When I was 10 years old (I turned 29 a couple weeks ago), I was already shaped by the bantering and arguments that I had with online strangers on a few dinky boards. You’re probably thinking that this sounds like how most kids are now. Sure, but that’s today. Back then it felt kind of new, special, and perhaps even subversive — like a countercultural movement.
Forums, or message boards, were a big part of why, growing up, the Internet was such a magical place to me. It was a place that existed next to the real world; one where I was able to be different versions of myself (depending on what I was into at the time) in a way that wasn’t easy to do offline. I loved it. It started my longstanding obsession with online communities and Internet culture. Seven years after founding Disqus, I’m right back where I started.
When Jason and I started Disqus in 2007, forums were our thing. We didn’t originally set out to build a commenting system, which is what Disqus is known for today. We were, in fact, attempting to build out a new vision for forums. As part of that, we had the idea for blogs to embed bits and pieces of this new platform we were building. That minor feature became the comment system — and it was the thing that people seemed to like immediately. We doubled down on the concept as a way to build a company, and today Disqus is the most popular service for comments in the world.
In one way, Disqus is a giant database of human expression. The comment system is available in over 40 languages and powers over 3 million communities. With that kind of reach, I have seen every imaginable aspect of human discourse. It ranges from fantastically insightful to depressingly awful on a daily basis. The bad stuff makes headlines (Internet comments is a punchline in itself for many articles) while the good stuff is like an inside tip few want to share. The truth is, we spent most of our time at Disqus weeding out the bad stuff and making tools that clean up other people’s comments sections. But as I’ve learned, it’s not fun to be great at making bad stuff invisible.
Make more good discussions.
Instead, I’ve made a conscious choice for Disqus to focus on making more good discussions happen. So over the last year, Disqus has quietly been building new products that we think make for better environments that can lead to better discussions.
In November of last year, we started piloting a new type of forum. The first two are focused on fashion and movies. And our latest is a mix-tape of discussion types. The team at Disqus kicked these off, but soon anyone will be able to start a channel here.
It’s been cool to see these communities give voice to people not often thought of as “experts” or “social media stars.” People like VyceVictus, who is a big time movie watcher and active US armed forces member. Or HaikuJew, a fashion-obsessed writer who comments frequently in… yup, Haiku format.
Facebook isn’t great for meeting people like this. And it’s not a good way for me to debate who makes a better Spider-Man with other movie geeks who speak my language. What we’re beginning to build at Disqus reminds me of hanging out on my favorite forums when I was 13.
The product is in its early stages, but our concept is simple: make it really easy for anyone to publish a discussion and make them beautiful, open and easy to find. When discussions are great, they should feel like magazine-quality content.
It’s not uncommon to see BuzzFeed repackage an AMA from Reddit as a featured article. That’s because many comment threads on Reddit are incredible pieces of content in itself, with good stories, helpful advice, even provoking insights. And that’s true of the millions of comment threads tucked away, hidden, in great forums around the Internet — and on Disqus. When discussion threads are good, they’re really good. They deserve to be presented more like an article you’d find in a publication and less like the transcript of a now-irrelevant chat.
We’re still building. Watch us do it.
You can see what we’re building by visiting Disqus.com. For the first time in its history, Disqus’ homepage is not highlighting a comment system for blogs. It’s now about the discussions and the people behind it. In a way, Disqus is showing off its original roots within discussion forums. We’ve learned from the great communities using Disqus for its comments. We’re also massively influenced by the amazing communities you can find on Reddit and sites like xoJane and The A.V. Club.
This is still all fairly early, but we want to be talking about our steps along the way. Our hypotheses, the progress, and the mistakes. I’ll be writing about it often here, and soon others on the team will chime in with their perspectives too.
Including a few facelifts and full rewrites, the widely-used Disqus Comment System is now over 7 years old. It’s not going anywhere and I’m excited about how we’re going to continue evolving it. But I’m especially giddy about the world we’re opening up with the new Disqus platform. It’s a fresh challenge and it feels different.
How different? For starters, you’ll notice that there is no familiar Disqus comment thread at the bottom of this post. I posted this on Medium, which isn’t compatible with our comment system. The Medium system for comments works fantastically well for this format. But for a discussion on this topic, I started a thread on Disqus and hope you’ll join me there.
