I used Disqus and liked it, and would like to congratulate them on their recent launch. But this is a very competitive market. Disqus is doing a good job, but I am not too clear how (in a major way) they differentiate from others. But they are getting lots of support from important bloggers. I know they were funded by Y Combinator and spent the summer in Boston. <p>I believe launching a product is as important (if not more important) than the idea, and getting it developed. These guys have had a great launch. I want to learn from them.<p>
Here are my questions:<p>Q1: Knowing there is many competition out there (but not exactly any clear leaders!) what made them interesting to Y Combinator, why were they chosen?<p>
Q2: Why so much hype and support (and so many positive reviews all over the place)? is it because of Y Combinator connections and support or there is more to it?<p>Q3: How big is this market and the potential of this business (if things workout for them) that got YC to invest?
<p>Note: I am not arguing whether they deserve it or not, and I am not questioning their product (but you could!) I just don't think they have revolutionized, there is many competition and they get the most attention, and I believe this kind of support could make or break a product. <p>Few similar products: SezWho, Intense Debate, Tangler, JS-Kit, CoComment ...
Here's what's special about Disqus's business model/idea:<p>1. They have a grand long term plan (provide blog readers a centralized place to manage discussions on the web). They're sort of a social network in that way and their value will increase exponentially as their user base does.<p>2. They have an easy route to gaining the critical mass, by providing bloggers a simple plug-in that gives threaded, voteable comments, as well as some extra kick ass functionality. So they have a ton of initial value even with no user base.<p>3. They have a path to revenue. Large blogs would gladly pay for the service. And they could form their own ad network, as they know who reads what blogs (interests). There's also a lot of moving going on in the web publishing space.<p>I feel like some of the competitors you've mentioned have parts of the puzzle but Disqus has the whole thing. Given all that, it's pretty easy to see why Y C would fund these guys.
Because the founders are really smart, capable, and driven. Same reason YC picks almost every company. The actual business idea is less important than the founders, as pg has said frequently.
The big problem with this product for bloggers is that bloggers won't get any search traffic from their comments. <p>Search engines either don't look inside of iframes, or point to the iframe's URL if they do.
'why are they getting so much attention from everyone?'<p>Its called a PR firm, and they take care of bombing every worthy media outlet with a tailored-made hyper-inflated story on how they will change the world (a.k.a 'Press release'). <p>They are generally expensive, but are often worth every penny since they have contacts in all the major media departments, which in turn create this type buzz. Wait till their PR budget runs out, then we will see if the software stands on its own.