Battlemouth

This is my first post here on Battlemouth; I write primarily for Will and Beyond, and will be doing a weekly post here. Will and Beyond’s posts don’t have any focus, and they won’t here either, but they will be somewhat in line with the type of content you’re used to seeing. Enjoy.

As various websites and blogs were starting up, many required you to register with their community in order to participate, and to leave comments. This is a trend that’s beginning to fall out of fashion; as the number of blogs goes up, the willingness of people to register on all of them plummets. One solution is to not require registration to leave comments. Most places have adopted this solution at some level, and allow you to comment anonymously; they don’t want to drive away readership and participation after all. However, people still want to build a community, so how do we go about this?

This is where third parties come in. If I create a system that multiple websites can implement, and show the same user information on all of them, everyone wins. People are using my service, and people are more motivated to participate on a website which uses my service, since they’re already registered for it, so that website wins. Enter the problem: “Oh that’s a great idea for a service, I’ll make something similar, but I’ll do it better, and people will use it instead!” Now there are multiple services, and people have to choose which to use. The problem begins to repeat itself. You can go ahead and register for all of them if you want, but these sites still allow anonymous participation to some degree, so most people will just pick one, and be excited to use it when they can.

I won’t be giving you a full list of pros and cons for each of the services below, I’ll just briefly be discussing them, and providing some good links for you to read up on if you’re developing a blog or website. I have some of these implemented at Will and Beyond, so those services will be getting a little more discussion, since I have more experience with them. You can implement one or many of these on your site, and I’ll talk a little bit about how some of them can work together too.

1. Gravatars:
Gravatars are globally recognized avatars; very clever name. When you’re participating at a site, you usually have the option of putting up an image, or avatar, which will appear whereever you write a comment, etc. Many sites do this, and more often than not, you are putting the same image everywhere. Why not just put it in one place and have it appear everywhere? This is the idea that Gravatar solves. Even if you use multiple avatars at different sites, you can use multiple email addresses, and have them show different images, so if you use one email address to register at a site, one image will appear, whereas another will appear with another email address. Along those same lines, you can have the same image appear regardless of what email you use, as long as you register them all under your account. Gravatars are easily implemented with popular blogging software like Blogger, TypePad, and WordPress, along with others. If you don’t use one of these, just as I don’t, they provide you with the code (in many languages) to easily implement it.

2. Intense Debate:
Intense Debate is a platform for commenting. It’s a pretty sleek service which lets you build up a reputation the more you comment, which is also based on voting comments up and down. You can have a global profile, and the comments themselves lay out in a nice threaded fashion. If you are installing or removing Intense Debate, there are ways to import or export your comments. I don’t use Intense Debate on my site, but I’ve used it hear and there (here on Battlemouth for example), and they have a great Intro video on their site. Like the idea of Intense Debate, but still want Gravatars? Well, luckily for you, they support Gravatars!

3. Disqus:
I don’t know quite as much about this service, as I haven’t encountered it personally. They also don’t have a snazzy intro video on their site, so that’s minus some points for them. I found an article that chooses Intense Debate over Disqus, but I easily found an article that took the other stance, so if you debating between these two, you should figure out what you’re looking for, then contact people who use each of them. Most likely you’ll be happy with either service, but you might as well get as much out of it as you can. Like the idea of Disqus, but still want Gravatars? Well, luckily for you, they support Gravatars!

4. Retaggr:
Like the idea of a global profile, but are satisfied with the way comments work on your site? (This was my situation.) Retaggr is most likely for you then. Retaggr is more than just a global profile though, it’s more like a business card. To see an example of what I mean by that, take a look at mine. Use YouTube, Facebook, Flickr, LinkedIn, Digg, or any other of a billion services out there? Then put them into your Retaggr profile. If you use Greasemonkey for Firefox you can also set it up so that Disqus, Twitter, FriendFeed, Flickr, or Tumblr will display ReTaggr information on those pages. This will just be on your computer, you’re not actually installing it on these sites, but it’s a nifty idea. And we can’t forget, like the idea of ReTaggr, but still want Gravatars? Well, luckily for you, they support Gravatars! (I can’t find a link, but I use ReTaggr, so I promise it does.)

In brief:
I’m not going to go into much detail on any of these, but there is yet another competitor with Intense Debate and Disqus, SezWho. Naturally, I found an article saying it’s better than both Intense Debate and Disqus, but I’m sure if you search, you can find something saying the opposite. The idea of OpenID is great, an open-source, delocalized solution to this choice, but it’s not quite there yet. I have some opinions on this, but many of them are summed up in an article they wrote about their current challenges.

That’s it for now; I’ll see you next week. Be sure to comment here to debate (intensely?) or feel free to contact me if you have questions.

Godspeed.