I'm a fan of getting a peek at what you, as a leading VC, are thinking about...but the community aspect of your comments is what really hooks me as well. I generally read your blog via google reader, but every time you post a topic of interest (which is often) I quickly jump over to start at least trolling through the comments...
In fact, I wish that disqus had the option to subscribe to the comments for a given post (ie. watch/listen to this post)...this way, when you have a post I know I want to follow the discussion about, I could just get an email update and/or RSS feed of the comments as they continue to flow in (right now I just manually remember to ping back to each post every so often and see where the discussion has gone)...I know I get alerted on replies to my own posts, but what I want is alerts on ALL the comments for any post I feel like following (just like you as the blog owner/poster gets)...do they already have this sort of feature and I just don't know about it (if so please point me to the help on how I can use it)...
fredwilson
· 10 months ago
That's a good suggestion
awatterson
· 10 months ago
Kinda similar to your thought, I wish there was a way to integrate Disqus or some other comment system into Google Reader. I don't mind jumping over to the site, but it'd be cool to be able to read and respond to comments within the reader.
rhodium
· 10 months ago
Yup - I use NetNewsWire but when it's interesting I jump to the web. It's a trend that (unfortunately) only resonates with this blog. I too wish disqus comments could somehow be embeded into the reader. Then again - most blogs don't have such insightful comments other than - "you suck" which is pointless. Perhaps a rating system similar to slashdot's model where the rss feed would capture highly rated comments in the feed..
awatterson
· 10 months ago
yeah, the slashdot makes sense, the problem is the chain effect of comments, you might get spotty discussion. The spam factor is a huge annoyance. I think AVC has a "bouncer" which is a cool thing to have and probably contributes a lot to the quality of discussion. Maybe as the semantic web evolves it will cut down the crap?
fredwilson
· 10 months ago
An enaged host and a bouncer seems like a good combo
kidmercury
· 10 months ago
you know it, boss!
business is definitely booming in the site security area. howard lindzon just hired me as bouncer on his blog as well. all the people whining about unemployment need to take a look at the bull market forming in site security!
fredwilson
· 10 months ago
Good idea. I know daniel will read all these comments and suggestions
You can already subscribe to Disqus threads. If you click the 'Options' button under the comments box it will expand to show a 'subscribe to this thread' link.
Phil
Vasudev Ram
· 10 months ago
falicon, I'm not 100% sure, but I think there are blog systems such as you describe / wish for. I say this because in the recent past I remember getting email notifications about *all* comments on some blog post(s) I had commented upon (not just email notifications about replies to my own comments). If I can find the name / URL of those blog(s), will post them here. Of course that might not meet your need completely, since I think you also want to get to see all comments from certain posts you like and want to follow, whether or not you commented on them at all (which I'm not sure the systems I saw, can do).
Jac
· 10 months ago
Nice to ear that from you, Fred. No kidding.
Jac
jacopogio
· 10 months ago
well, I also took time to go to disqus ;-)
howardlindzon
· 10 months ago
Better yet fred, just send people to my blog :)
steveplace
· 10 months ago
It's become a habit of mine to read comments before blog posts or links to social media sites (hackernews), as I derive more value from the conversation rather than the soapbox.
It's also true with a lot of the trading sites I frequent, where the comments have better trade ideas than the author.
I'm an avid user of stocktwits, because it helps increase the S/N when it comes to financial commentary. I'm tooling around with the Disqus api to see if something similar can be made and whether any value can come from it.
direwolff
· 10 months ago
where's our cut fred? :)
cyanbane
· 10 months ago
Over the past 2-3 (maybe 4?) years I have come here for the music posts, but I usually stay for the tech posts & their comments.
kidmercury
· 10 months ago
you gone pop boss. you're a certifiable blog star.
blog stars dont just build blogs. they build communities. which is why i think we'll see new content management systems and business models built for blog stars (to help them maximize their influence/brand strength), and why the forthcoming niche social network revolution will be led by blog stars. a CMS that is more community-oriented will allow for a better experience and greater monetization opportunities.
fredwilson
· 10 months ago
Do you think that cms will be a monolithic app or a collection of best of breed apps like WP and disqus?
William Mougayar
· 10 months ago
The later plus more. A corporate CMS should include/capture the external conversations and relevant online social media as a whole, but I'm not sure it's being done well yet. IT is still hugging the firewall, which was originally designed for network security, but being used for content garden walling. Well done mashups that are semantically linked are the way to go, in my opinion. How many users are reading your posts from inside their firewall via a window in their cms? I bet close to zero. They have to go outside to read it.
kidmercury
· 10 months ago
i am extremely biased as i am taking the best of breed route with my business, so naturally i am expecting best of breed to be the winning approach. what i am also expecting and think will be absolutely fantastic for customers/users is that companies will end up competing for who can be the best remixer, i.e. is WP and disqus the best combo, or is it something else, or will certain remixes appeal to certain users (that's what i expect).
Jay Parkhill
· 10 months ago
I am hoping for the latter. My bike racing team generates HUGE volumes of content on a yahoo list and a forum. Both are terribly outdated and manage to either bury content (forum) or overload email inboxes (list).
A blog + comments would be fantastic in a bunch of ways, esp. because timely content would stay at the top. It needs to be "massively multi-authored" though, so all 75 members of the team could post.
rikin
· 10 months ago
I'm a pretty new reader around this bloggerhood but a while back I implemented Disqus on my site because of how much I enjoyed the experience here. Oh, and your content is decent too.
Ever thought about adding an actual forum? I'm a member of a few other groups with a similar focus like nextNY but forums and message-boards always seem to take a turn for the worst and obscure over time.
ostermayer
· 10 months ago
This blog is turning into the "slashdot.org" of all things Venture and that is definitely a good thing. I believe that the core reason you receive so many well written comments is that you respond to the majority of good ones and that creates a standard for other comments that aren't so good to live up to. When bloggers ignore their comment system and never respond, the comments often "run amok"
markslater
· 10 months ago
slashdot - now that is staying power. my favorite blog.
markslater
· 10 months ago
see what i mean - new slashdot headline:
' Casinos Warn iPhone Card-Counting App is Illegal '
who would not want to read that!
fredwilson
· 10 months ago
Or don't happen at all. I agree that host has to attend the party and engage in the conversation
csertoglu
· 10 months ago
Fred, you don't write a blog, you host a community and moderate a conversation.
fredwilson
· 10 months ago
Agreed
rob
· 10 months ago
great ad for disqus
fredwilson
· 10 months ago
Agreed. That's 'my truth'
John Maloney
· 10 months ago
Fred
No question your blog demands and gets higher quality commenting - very hard to find this combination of insightful posts and community contributions - nicely done. Just ask David Denby, film critic (?), on NPR this morning to talk about his new book Snark and calling out blog comments as "undermining public discourse".
Morning Edition, February 17, 2009 ยท A new book says snark is threatening to take over how Americans converse. Snark is a tone of teasing or snideness. David Denby is the author of Snark. He talks with Ari Shapiro about how clever put-downs and cheap shots are coarsening public debate.
Your blog is one of the most interesting out there. I think you get engagement for all these reasons but also because you share more. I love trying the music you talk about, for instance. The standard old VC blog never does that. That turns into engagement that is reflected in your comments.
fredwilson
· 10 months ago
Thanks robert. Coming from you, that's a huge compliment
William Mougayar
· 10 months ago
Goes to validate the power of smart conversations. Get the right people at the table, and you get the smartest table. The blog post itself is just the spark that ignates the value found in the comments and discussion. What's astonishing is the speed at which comments coalesce into actionable ideas...collaborative thinking at its best.
fredwilson
· 10 months ago
The email reply feature facilitates that fast conversation
pescatello
· 10 months ago
i love in general how the comments call BS on certain posts. Someone can post crap, but it won't stand up in the comments. But a good post will be validated by the comments and as a reader you can get a better sense of what it out there by either the validation or the condemnation in the comments.
Also, the "comments industry" seems to be growing. With Disqus, Wordpress' improvements, and FriendFeed's integration it seems that there's war over where the comments are happening. The good news is that regardless of the implementation the users are getting notified to the conversation. I'm curious to see how it plays out and matures.
markslater
· 10 months ago
its amaizing how timing really does dictate how well a business does. the comments industry has been around for years, and people have been socially or professionally organizing around comments since the early/mid 90's. the most popular software was http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UBB.threads - i remember a vibrant community of Liverpool FC supporters existed using this open source platform back then.
Now it seems - with the advent of ubiquitous contributors, bloggers and the such - a whole new segment of the population is being exposed to the value / enjoyment of 'the thread'.
markslater
· 10 months ago
i look at this blog in contrast to techcrunch and my subsequent use / engagement of both. this one exists because its a conversation starter, and high quality conversation aggregator. I enjoy participating (mostly badly i am sure) for this reason. techcrunch used to be this - however it is now regressed and become a news wire. the comments are no longer engaging, and the community is fragmented. I guess this all comes from one being a soapbox with a great crowd of participants, the other being a billboard with a bunch of shep fairey tags written or stuck on it.
Fred is hyde park corner, Arrington is time square.
there must be a business in the soapbox no?
fredwilson
· 10 months ago
There is. We are just trying to figure it out
MParekh
· 10 months ago
Good listing of success drivers of the AVC blogs morphing it to a forum in addition to a blog. To the list I'd add your comfort level in being candid with how you feel about things, and laying out your thought process in doing so...tough for most to do, especially since the web is for posterity.
Also, Disqus also an important driver as you note. Separately, hope they're thinking/working about how to bring a comment/forum feel to users on Twitter.
markslater
· 10 months ago
install disqus on your blog michael!
MParekh
· 10 months ago
have tried to install disqus a few times, but I use a standard Typepad blog, and it seems to require lot more software tinkering on my part to make it work, and ran into a show-stopper (for me anyway), each time... will take a look at it again. Thanks.
fredwilson
· 10 months ago
The posterity point is a big one. I've gotten used to entrepreneurs using my words and the words of my partners in meetings
EricaJoy
· 10 months ago
"But if you want a community, you have to have tough skin sometimes." It boggles me how many people fail to grasp that concept.
julieallen
· 10 months ago
i'm a big fan of disqus - it's taken community engagement to a whole new level.
not that it matters - but i noticed when commenting on your apple / flash post yesterday - that almost 100% of the comments you receive are from guys. interesting. where are all the girls... or am i the only one?!
fredwilson
· 10 months ago
There are a few, but they are far between
Particularly when it gets down to serious tech stuff (which I should avoid posting on)
andyswan
· 10 months ago
Jules, it's your show. Represent.
DorianBenkoil
· 10 months ago
What I want to know, Fred, is if you're writing, this and Tumblogging and commenting 5-10 places, and speaking at conferences and reading a lot, when is it you have time for actual work?
fredwilson
· 10 months ago
It's all real work
aarondelcohen
· 10 months ago
Fred:
I think you underate how important the consitency of your posting ranks in the formation of this community. People are checking their readers or feeds every day for many blogs, but not all of them update all the time. Especially not the ones where only one person is the writer.
I really admire your discipline. I tried it for two months, but then grew weary, but I love reaidng you and you inspire some of us to stick with it.
Andrew B.
· 10 months ago
Fred, in the past week you've had comments from 314 different people. Of those, 161 were using Disqus accounts, 15 were using Facebook accounts, and the rest were unregistered.
fredwilson
· 10 months ago
Thanks!
fredwilson
· 10 months ago
I updated the post with this info
anotherjesse
· 10 months ago
Given that Disqus used to be for forums (check out their API - still uses the language of forums and threads), are there examples of people using disqus for both blog comments and forums on their site?
Vaibhav Domkundwar
· 10 months ago
No question about it, Fred. There is a wealth of insight in the comments. It will be interesting to figure our a way to extract conversations around specific topics that have taken place here in a consolidated format. I am note sure if this can be a feature of a commenting system or something for the entire blog/site, but it will be good to see all comments/thoughts/ideas about twitter or disqus or anything else in a more consolidated form.
fredwilson
· 10 months ago
I like the idea of a "summarizer" app for an entire comment thread
Andy Freeman
· 10 months ago
I don't know if it's disqus or something specific to avc.com, but this blog throws javascript errors like crazy and uses incredible amounts of cpu.
FWIW, I'm running IE7.
frontierblog
· 10 months ago
I cannot agree more, actually I wrote a similar post weeks ago
It's a good discussion. Maybe we can have it over coffee or tea sometime. I'd like that.
Daniel Ha
· 10 months ago
I like the title of the post because Disqus was originally described to others as a discussion tool with one key feature being an "embeddable forum" for your blog.
Fred, you were an early enough to be a user while we were still pushing this idea, but I doubt you remember much of it. We didn't do a good job in completely pursuing that concept, and soon after we realized a better product out of it (today's Disqus).
I'm going to write more about this someday, but a small, stripped down remnant of the community-fostering forum aspect is in the community pages e.g. avc.disqus.com.
To answer your question, 278 unique commenters commented on your articles between Feb 9th and Feb 16th with 165 of those people having verified identities.
[edit] Andrew posted more accurate numbers:
314 different people. Of those, 161 were using Disqus accounts, 15 were using Facebook accounts, and the rest were unregistered.
pauljacobson
· 10 months ago
Hey Daniel
Interesting that you say that about Disqus as a kind of embeddable forum. I have been thinking about installing a forum on my site to encourage more feedback from my readers and community but I want something with Disqus' functionality. I suppose a blog post can become a forum of sorts with this sort of commenting. Where would you draw the line between a forum and a forum-like blog?
niel
· 7 months ago
nice ya...i like...view my blog...
howardlindzon
· 10 months ago
more nudity and smut please. Time to see the nerds forum evolve ?
All Comments
In fact, I wish that disqus had the option to subscribe to the comments for a given post (ie. watch/listen to this post)...this way, when you have a post I know I want to follow the discussion about, I could just get an email update and/or RSS feed of the comments as they continue to flow in (right now I just manually remember to ping back to each post every so often and see where the discussion has gone)...I know I get alerted on replies to my own posts, but what I want is alerts on ALL the comments for any post I feel like following (just like you as the blog owner/poster gets)...do they already have this sort of feature and I just don't know about it (if so please point me to the help on how I can use it)...
you might get spotty discussion. The spam factor is a huge annoyance. I
think AVC has a "bouncer" which is a cool thing to have and probably
contributes a lot to the quality of discussion. Maybe as the semantic web
evolves it will cut down the crap?
business is definitely booming in the site security area. howard lindzon just hired me as bouncer on his blog as well. all the people whining about unemployment need to take a look at the bull market forming in site security!
Phil
Jac
It's also true with a lot of the trading sites I frequent, where the comments have better trade ideas than the author.
I'm an avid user of stocktwits, because it helps increase the S/N when it comes to financial commentary. I'm tooling around with the Disqus api to see if something similar can be made and whether any value can come from it.
blog stars dont just build blogs. they build communities. which is why i think we'll see new content management systems and business models built for blog stars (to help them maximize their influence/brand strength), and why the forthcoming niche social network revolution will be led by blog stars. a CMS that is more community-oriented will allow for a better experience and greater monetization opportunities.
How many users are reading your posts from inside their firewall via a window in their cms? I bet close to zero. They have to go outside to read it.
A blog + comments would be fantastic in a bunch of ways, esp. because timely content would stay at the top. It needs to be "massively multi-authored" though, so all 75 members of the team could post.
Ever thought about adding an actual forum? I'm a member of a few other groups with a similar focus like nextNY but forums and message-boards always seem to take a turn for the worst and obscure over time.
' Casinos Warn iPhone Card-Counting App is Illegal '
who would not want to read that!
No question your blog demands and gets higher quality commenting - very hard to find this combination of insightful posts and community contributions - nicely done. Just ask David Denby, film critic (?), on NPR this morning to talk about his new book Snark and calling out blog comments as "undermining public discourse".
Morning Edition, February 17, 2009 ยท A new book says snark is threatening to take over how Americans converse. Snark is a tone of teasing or snideness. David Denby is the author of Snark. He talks with Ari Shapiro about how clever put-downs and cheap shots are coarsening public debate.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?st...
___________________________
The blog post itself is just the spark that ignates the value found in the comments and discussion.
What's astonishing is the speed at which comments coalesce into actionable ideas...collaborative thinking at its best.
Also, the "comments industry" seems to be growing. With Disqus, Wordpress' improvements, and FriendFeed's integration it seems that there's war over where the comments are happening. The good news is that regardless of the implementation the users are getting notified to the conversation. I'm curious to see how it plays out and matures.
Now it seems - with the advent of ubiquitous contributors, bloggers and the such - a whole new segment of the population is being exposed to the value / enjoyment of 'the thread'.
Fred is hyde park corner, Arrington is time square.
there must be a business in the soapbox no?
Also, Disqus also an important driver as you note. Separately, hope they're thinking/working about how to bring a comment/forum feel to users on Twitter.
will take a look at it again. Thanks.
not that it matters - but i noticed when commenting on your apple / flash post yesterday - that almost 100% of the comments you receive are from guys. interesting. where are all the girls... or am i the only one?!
Particularly when it gets down to serious tech stuff (which I should avoid posting on)
I think you underate how important the consitency of your posting ranks in the formation of this community. People are checking their readers or feeds every day for many blogs, but not all of them update all the time. Especially not the ones where only one person is the writer.
I really admire your discipline. I tried it for two months, but then grew weary, but I love reaidng you and you inspire some of us to stick with it.
FWIW, I'm running IE7.
Edward
Frontier Blog - No one ahead, no one behind
http://www.hwswworld.com/wp
Information vs. Judgment: A VC's dilemma
http://counternotions.com/2009/02/18/judgment/
I'd like that.
Fred, you were an early enough to be a user while we were still pushing this idea, but I doubt you remember much of it. We didn't do a good job in completely pursuing that concept, and soon after we realized a better product out of it (today's Disqus).
I'm going to write more about this someday, but a small, stripped down remnant of the community-fostering forum aspect is in the community pages e.g. avc.disqus.com.
To answer your question, 278 unique commenters commented on your articles between Feb 9th and Feb 16th with 165 of those people having verified identities.
[edit] Andrew posted more accurate numbers:
Interesting that you say that about Disqus as a kind of embeddable forum. I have been thinking about installing a forum on my site to encourage more feedback from my readers and community but I want something with Disqus' functionality. I suppose a blog post can become a forum of sorts with this sort of commenting. Where would you draw the line between a forum and a forum-like blog?