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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7 Comments
That’s really fun because I had this feeling of disapointment too when I tried the new version of Tumblr, and I wrote quite the same thing on my own blog (in french). Right now, we can’t talk about a new version of Tumblr, this is just a new design :-/
Hope we’ll see some new Tumblr features in the coming days!
Me too, Bastien. I really hope they release some great features because if they don’t, it’s going to be harder and harder to justify a Tumblr account to anyone. Already, there are some features of the site that go completely unused, as far as I can tell (for instance, the “friending” aspect). Let’s just hope that doesn’t happen to the entire rest of the service.
Thanks for commenting!
I knew when I read that DISQUS came out with a release you would have a summary of it here soon enough.
So I guess my question would be two part.
a) I remember you had DISQUS installed on this blog, what happened?
b) Do you see DISQUS being for blog commenting what ShareThis/AddThis does for social media sharing and Feedburner for RSS? In my opinion ShareThis and Feedburner are two must installs on any blog, could DISQUS be heading that direction?
Hi Kyle! Sorry for the delayed response, I’ve been getting lax in responding to comments. Glad I didn’t disappoint!
a) I didn’t like how it couldn’t import old comments into DISQUS. I didn’t like how it didn’t match the look and feel of the old design (nor does it do so here). I didn’t like how the comments weren’t indexed within the site. (I’m embarrassed to say the look was probably Reason #1. I like things to look as professional as possible.)
b) It’s hard to say at this point. I’ve heard many people say, “I’m MUCH less likely to comment on a blog without DISQUS.” Then again, I think these are the anal-retentive early adopters that like their way or the highway. I do think, eventually, that some sort of comment aggregation system will become the norm, but not one that aggregates merely blog comments, but ones from all over the social Internet.
Thanks for reading, great questions, you’re really making me think!
Can’t crash that. It’s got to look good while also being useful. I might play around with it on my personal blog that I never use… but then again nobody comments on that one.
I wonder if DISQUS also does a really good job of handling spam? That could be another reason that helps it win out? Akismet is great, but it doesn’t catch everything.
See, I’ve already switched back to Disqus! I’m such a flip-flopper! Let me know what you think. The shoddy integration is already grating on me, but I do like the widget to the right there (on which you’re quite the man)!
DISQUS does do a great job of spam handling since the spam-bots that target WordPress blogs don’t know how to handle it yet. You still get comments with DISQUS running but you can be 100% confident that they’re spam! Akismet has never missed a spam for me, but then again, I don’t get the numbers you do either. Edit: see, I’m back to the original comments again! Argh!
Hi Andy
Saw your post in the forums and I wondered if you got any justice on the CSS integration with your Thesis theme as I am thinking of buying and upgrading to it but I need to know it won’t make my site ugly.
Could you email me directly as I would love to have a chat about your experiences etc with Thesis.
Cheers