Remember the Venice Project? Back in 2006 people were sure this mysterious IPTV solution would ‘kill YouTube’ and even Om Malik wanted an invitation. So, what happened to it? It was released as Joost – a service which offers quite high definition video but still lacks major shows (their offering primarily being a few series of Babylon 5 and Peep Show in the UK) and more often than not has content already available on other sites. They even abandoned their desktop P2P-based approach to taking a more accessible streaming Flash browser video one. Joost definitely is not one of the greatest Web 2.0 services like many expected it to be!
Perhaps you recall ‘Citizendium‘, a wiki encyclopedia which unlike Wikipedia had strict editing controls. The site was co-founded by Wikipedia’s co-founder, Larry Sanger. Despite coverage from major news outlets (from newspapers to tech blogs), Citizendium has failed to ever seem to reach a reasonable size: only 9217 articles in over 2 years. That’s roughly the size of Wikipedia… in Chuvash (a language spoken in a small Russian republic!).
What about coComment? The service in many respects seems to have been usurped by Disqus etc. yet coComment’s aim of unifying fragmented conversation has still gone unachieved. coComment used to be extremely popular, but now I do not know any blogs, nor bloggers, who use it.
Another example is AllPeers. AllPeers was basically a service which allows people to set up ‘private’ P2P networks so friends etc can share files. This was all done through a Firefox plugin. Demand for invites was high, but it has now shut down despite its old popularity!
Web 2.0 was the era of “hype”. This often led to disillusionment and disappointment, but we should not forget the success stories… I know people through this blog who have made a small fortune.
‘Blog in isolation’ published 25 reasons why we should use Disqus, the hot blog commenting community and management system of 20,000 blogs, which also isn’t short of funding. I, personally, don’t think it’s so ‘hot’ and I have a number of issues with the service.
Disqus looks nice, with threaded comments, shared profiles and email updates, but it hosts and manages your comments on an external site.
- It will slow my site down
Remotely hosting my commenting means that for them to be viewed, I have to download them from another website and call them from a remote database. This, surely, reduces performance and increases pageload time.
- I don’t want to entrust my comments with someone else. They could get lost.
If Disqus were to go bankrupt, what guarntees would I have that my comments would not be lost?
- Many things Disqus provide have already been provided elsewhere.
Shared profiles: TypeKey. Gravatars: Gravatars. Threaded comments: This plugin. Editable comments: This plugin.
- Data protection.
IANAL but surely it can’t be good to subject users to another privacy policy with servers in another jurisdiction. Who would be liable for any breaches in data protection?
- Disqus is not open source.
There is an API, but it isn’t open source. Is it ever wise to use a system of which you cannot see the technical basis?
- It isn’t easy to migrate to and from.
If I wanted to leave, I would have to find a way of transferring my comments. Disqus doesn’t complement your current comment system, like coComment does, but replaces it.
- Disqus is a company. They want to make money. They could serve ads on your sites.
Disqus have the technical capacity to serve adverts on your site, as they could put them in comments or send them along with the comments to be displayed. You’d have to trust them.
- It is a fad which will probably fade out, meaning more work for you as you migrate back.
Do you remember that fantastic coComment service we all used to use? Its Alexa rank says you don’t.
