Ever since discovering Disqus, I have been keeping an eye on their product. For some periods of time I have used their commenting system across my blogs – yet for some reason or another would revert to WordPress‘ default commenting system or try other services like Intense Debate. I have more than few complains about the speed of their plugin – one of the main reasons I would stop using it.

But things at Disqus have changed. Not only they gained a powerful ally in Andy Beard, whose opinion is respected and valued by the thousands in the blogging community, they have also dramatically improved their product from the time I last tested it.

If you are dissatisfied with the you current commenting system on your blog, here are my two cents on why you should seriously consider using Disqus on your blog.

• Disqus allows your readers to comment using their Facebook & Twitter Credentials.
• Disqus allows you to reply to comments via e-mail.
• Disqus allows you to manage multiple blogs from one account.
• Disqus integrates well into Blogger.com powered blogs. If you share my sentiment, you probably do not comment often on Blogger- their native comment system needs some major overhaul. Using the Disqus on blogger can probably increase users interaction via comments.
• Finally Disqus folks at Diqus are really paying attention to what other people are saying about their services. They also seem to be implementing things gathered from the feedback from users.

In the past I often questioned using a third party commenting system. Now I am becoming more and more convinced that Disqus is actually one of the very few systems capable of providing real value to it’s users.

While some of my online buddies are giving IntenseDebate a second chance, I am completely new to IntenseDebate.

In the past I have been using Disqus on many of my blogs. In recent weeks though, I have noticed an increased number of spam comments getting through. It is a testimony to the fact that Disqus is growing in popularity, therefore gets targeted more by spammers.

Having used the IntenseDebate just for a few hours, I think they have plenty of features to impress some very advanced bloggers.

They offer an option to sync your WordPress data (mostly comments) on a few levels, while also offer an option to let Akismet to take care of spam. I am not sure I am too thrilled about Akismet option as it caught legitimate comments in the past on my blogs. I still use Spam Karma, but Akismet underwent some big updates in recent months so maybe, I should give it a second chance.

My beef so far is that IntenseDebate plugin does not separate trackbacks from comments, but I am sure Scott is already working on a solution.

Yesterday’s episode with Disqus had raised some serious questions in my head regarding allowing a third party to manage comments of my visitors. I issued a private apology to Daniel Ha for “jumping the gun” over the Google Analytics. I was wrong implying that Disqus was doing something shady. Many of the similar services use Google Analytics. So whenever a widget from Disqus is served on your blog, you might see in your status bar the url from Google Analytics blinking, even though you might not have Google Analytics code installed on your website. So don’t get spooked as I did yesterday, Disqus is not spying on you.

Yesterday’s episode however showed me that my decision to let Disqus manage my comments had some serious shortcomings.

By letting a third party manage the unique content of your blog, one very important thing happens. You no longer have the absolute and exclusive control of that content. If you are fine with it, you should probably look into services like Disqus- they do have some killer features that I will definitely miss.

I also would like apologize to every person who commented on my blog during the time Disqus managed the comments. Since I have turned the Disqus plugin off, it may appear that your comments are gone. But they are not, they just not on this blog. You still can find them on Disqus: http://sageblogger.disqus.com/ . The export/import feature on Disqus desires much improvement to successfully transfer all the comments back to this blog. I do not intend to close my account with Disqus, so your comments should be save there. I will be trying to move them to my blog, even if it means I need to do it manually.