Some of these are highlighted by the intuitive readers here, but for the record here are some “real” issues:

1) proprietary login = lock-in: disqus has a proprietary login. this means that a blogger/web site encourages it’s users create an identity within disqus. If the site chooses to remove disqus in the future then all of the identities disappear. If the site uses other web services then it’s
visitors will have multiple logins for one site. Both instances are a disaster.

2) Proprietary visitor profile: All of the data created in the disqus profile is locked into disqus. It cannot be accessed by other services or the visitor. Again, if the site adds other services then the visitor would have to re-upload the same data [avatar, name, etc]. This is a complete
waste of effort forced on the visitor - both the site and visitor cannot exit disqus without losing all of their profile data.

3) Monetization: Disqus is a for profit business. so where is the monetization model? Since disqus bloggers logins, visitor profile data, and community pages they are locked into a business model that is undefined. what if disqus starts showing ads on the community pages and the blogger disagrees? what if they start charging a monthly fee? What if they start a destination site around comments and charge the blogger for referral traffic [don't think this
can happen? ask the sites that started using the "free" powerreviews service and then had to compete with buzzillions, or bazarvoice, etc.] Without a clear path for earning money and simultaneously being locked-in means that sites take a big risk when deploying disqus.

In effort at full transparency, these points are all straight from the horse’s mouth at JS-Kit Khris Loux. I have close relationships with virtually every startup launched in the last two years and the good news for your readers is that Khris is not wrong. Disqus is a fairly powerful platform, but though I predicted it would overshadow KIT in the long term..even I was wrong. Loux and his team are efforting open source and transparency in the most credible ways. Disqus has a model that does not appear to have the user’s interest in mind.

Regardless of how much we like an innovation, we must look at the vision and direction behind it. JS-Kit uses OpenID and allows full disclosure and sharing of their monetization plan and scheme. If appearances were everything, then no one would use another comment platform other than KIT. Yes, I work for them, but I also work for some of the best in the business and hand selected them as entities I wanted to be behind.

If you look at the innovation, service, ideology and long term merit of Disqus versus JS-Kit with any depth perception at all …the evaluation is quite pat.

Please let me know if you have any questions or issues and I will always help. Again, a very perceptive and valid argument going on here.

Always,

Phil Butler

yes i realize my words here are anecdotal and therefore no supportive towards any argument except that not everyone thinks that the comments are a baby that could be thrown out like a bad metaphor. but then again i have no pretension of making a living as a blogger of any sort.

I share your concerns and have thus far not given Disqus a try. Maybe I will when they have the ability to export comments.

Scoble, I do like the centralization of Disqus, as you do. It is just concerning to add a second point of failure. Honestly, if the Wordpress folks did it, I’d be a little less concerned.