A year and a half ago I weighed in on third party commenting systems. My message? Avoid them. It's time to rethink that position. Here's why. Social technology has changed alot since then. At the time of my original post there were fewer compelling reasons to use outside systems. For the most part the added value of those systems came in the form of additional features (like threaded comments for example) that the native comment systems of WordPress and Drupal didn't have. Since then WordPress and Drupal have both added threaded commenting to their core software as I knew they would. But something else has happened since.

A number of compelling identity systems have emerged. Facebook, Twitter, and Google have launched APIs (application programming interfaces) that allow 3rd party software to connect with their sites, access profile information and post content. As a result of this development website owners have a new authentication option for visitors to their site. Instead of having people verify their identity by setting up a new account, they can login with an existing profile. Beyond that, when visitors make comments they can push notifications about the comments back to the service of their choice. So they can let their network know about your site when they make a comment. These types of features really expand the possibilities for people to discover your website and are also likely to increase engagement since people can quickly make comments without having to create a new account. All good stuff.

While systems like WordPress and Drupal have modules that support these types of plugins the support for them is a bit spotty. For example, I've gotten Google Friend Connect working on my Learn By The Drop site. Unfortunately I've had to implement a workaround to the module because the initial release hasn't been updated. There are other modules that offer connection to Twitter, Facebook and Google for all the major open source systems but there always seems to be a catch. Either you have to rely on yet another service provider (in the case of Gigya Socialize) or you need to install multiple modules (that don't necessarily play nice with each other) in order to to take advantage of all the services. Dropping in a third party commenting system is one way to get around those issues.

Right now there are three major players in the comment space, Disqus, IntenseDebate and Echo (formerly known as JS-Kit). IntenseDebate is owned by Automattic which runs the WordPress.com service. Based on my research it actually looks like Disqus and Echo are the more promising options for dropping in a new comment system on your site. I've seen some negative comments about Intense Debate. My friend Neville Hobson in the UK tried it and lost confidence in the service. It also appears that IntenseDebate does not currently appear to support Google Friend Connect. Meanwhile both Echo and Disqus have had high profile system enhancements that make those services very effective. I've posted a quick screencast below that shows how those two services work.

While there are some nice benefits of outsourcing your comments there are also some drawbacks. First off, since you're embedding a system running on another server then if that server goes down it could take your site down or at the very least take down your comments for the length of the outage. A slow server on their part will slow your site down as well. Both of those things can really kill activity on your site. Of late it seems like the services mentioned here have performed well but you never know. There's also the issue of retaining existing comments and taking comments with you if you leave. I know that Disqus does a good job with retaining all of your comments. Echo will import comments and keep the Echo comments synced with your native commenting system in the background. So both of these services sound like they make it easy to switch back if you don't like them.

Disqus and IntenseDebate are free whereas Echo costs $12 a year and you can go "white label" with Echo for $48 per year. Many people are put off by having to pay for social services such as this but you have to consider that a source of revenue means something. Companies that charge are more likely to continue upgrading their services to satisfy their paying customers. This assumes that the service is a quality one that works well. Both Disqus and Echo meet that criteria. The jury is still out for me on IntenseDebate.