It was the best of times, it was the worst of times; it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness; it was the age of DISQUS, it was the age of Tumblr.
Over the past two days, two highly-regarded and much-loved Internet services released updates: Top-notch global commenting system DISQUS and microblogging/aggregation tool Tumblr. Unfortunately, in the world of incremental updates, all is not created equal, as these two very different releases have demonstrated. While DISQUS released a brand new update chock full of features users have been begging for for weeks, Tumblr provided its loyal fanbase with something bigger.
What’s new with DISQUS
As Inquisitr mastermind Duncan Riley quips, “The last excuse for you not to try Disqus has just been hit on the head.” It’s true, too. The bevy of new features included in 2.0 includes:
- true import and export of comments
- synchronization between DISQUS and WordPress
- faster speed and more accessible interface
- a new “comment blog” concept
That last, while possibly the most unbaked concept in the new release, may also be the most promising: since many more users comment on blogs than maintain one, it makes sense for one to be able to publicly share his or her responses in an attractive and accessible way online. See Louis Gray’s comment blog, or “clog,” to see this function in action.1
All in all, this DISQUS release is an excellent one and should go an extremely long way in getting new users to implement the system on their own sites.
What’s new with Tumblr
Earlier, I said Tumblr provided their users with a big improvement. Unfortunately, it seems as if all that’s been upgraded is the size of the login box.
So, in summary, here are the new features available with the Tumblr beta:
- bigger login box
Yeah, I’m not impressed either. To give the guys over at Tumblr credit, it does sound like they’re rolling out exciting new changes:
Nearly every piece of the interface has changed. We’ve tried to perfect the presentation of the Dashboard, and the retooled interface will enable a lot of the new functionality we’re prepping to launch.
That sounds promising, even if it does seem a bit ridiculous to create a brand new tumblr-beta.com domain just to host these new changes. I was personally hoping that Tumblr would win me back from the likes of Swurl or Sweetcron, but it’s not happening with Version 4.
How do you feel about these new releases?
- In case you’re wondering why DISQUS isn’t implemented on andydesoto.com, it’s pretty simple: although I’m fascinated by the service and think it’s a great idea, I just enjoy the comment styling of this fantastic Chris Pearson theme way too much to part with it. [↩]
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