OK, this might be a really stupid question. If so, I apologize, but...

What happens if Disqus goes out of business? Do all of your comments evaporate? Or are the comments stored locally somehow?

"... What happens if Disqus goes out of business? Do all of your comments evaporate? ..."

A quick look at the website would reveal, "No" ~ http://disqus.com/help/#faq-6

  I use Disqus because it gives me 
  "the freedom to leave" at anytime

Understand that data "Lock-in" is the new "Lock-out". If Disqus does collapse, I still have my data because I have access to it now. To understand why this is important read about "The zen of free" ~ http://asay.blogspot.com/2006/06/simon-phipps-on-zen-of-free... by Simon Phipps.

What about the loss of page rank and search due to content not being hosted on your server? Could disqus perhaps allow you to use a custom subdomain (such as disqus.yourblog.com)?

Disqus comments are included via javascript, so you don't have outbound links that diminish pagerank.

Comments won't be indexed by Google but your article text and links to the article from other blogs will have a bigger impact on where you appear in SERPs.

I am not convinced. I do see the advantages but I would rather have the text on my blog. The comment text gives your blog a little more life in the eyes of Google and adds just a little more content.

If I don't want to mess with creating a comment system then why did I build my own blog in the first place?

I think a good compromise to make things easier for the commenter is to use Clickpass for easy login.

I don't mind that my blog is being commented other places (like we are doing here for this entry) but if a commenter is at my site then that is where I want my text to live.

It's a two way street - a long discussion on a topic with a specific keyword can hurt your ranking for that keyword if the discussions aren't using the phrase you're targeting.

I love the quick and easy functionality that Disqus has and am using it on a few of my blogs. I'd like to set it up for my companies web properties but am reluctant because we already have our own login and user systems.

One bit of information is missing:

what's the price?

I don't think he's talking about a monetary price, rather sacrifices that bloggers might be making to use their service, as others have pointed out here - page rank, etc.

Actually, I was talking about both. It's all good and great that they'll host my comments, but how do they make their money?

I need to know this in order to migrate.

Hmm, no obvious way to make money, do we assume they last until they run out of VC money?

An obvious way to make money: Persistent reputation is extremely valuable. Extended and deep information about a user from their writings and the sites they visit is extremely valuable. Think about the targeted advertising down the long tail, where eCPM will be huge.

I'd hope their plan is more than to reach some critical mass then start inserting ads into people's blogs. Will it be "put our ads on your blog, and we'll split the profits" or "pay for Disqus or we'll put ads on your site"? I guess we'll wait and see, perhaps they'll manage to productise it, if they've not reached the maximum price point yet.

There are many ways for them to make money. My point was to counter your comment that there were no obvious ways.

And the biggest reason not to: javascript is required. It causes really bad problems in IE: http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2008/04/23/what-happened-to...

I'd have to think that they are working on an API solution that will have MT and WordPress plugins that use it...The JS problem is just too big not to be addressed.

Seriously? That looks pretty easy to avoid.

He forgot the most important reason (to me): You can stick a fully functional comment system on anything without doing it yourself. Why reinvent the wheel and deal with managing your own when you can just tack on an excellent system by someone else?

How far do you want to take this though? Why not just use Blogger or Wordpress.com? Why custom code your own blog?

BTW, I assume you are talking about a custom coded blog (or whatever is being commented) because systems like Wordpress or ExpressionEngine make adding commenting trivially easy.

I have coded my own blog in the past, and yeah, after a while it's boring and so I just use Blogger now. But you can stick comments on more than just blog entries.

At least I was under the impression that you could put Disqus comments on anything really (is that not true?). It would be trivially easy to make a site like HN... just a list of links and with disqus comments for each of them. I am working on a project right now where people can suggest strategies for something and others can comment on them. Disqus would be an easy fit there as well.

You could host your own photos with some quick gallery code too, but why not let Flickr do it? I think Disqus is in the same category.

Yes, you can put Disqus comments on anything that's for public consumption and has a permalink.

If you enable Disqus comments on OurDoings, any photo you deem worthy of a caption will get its own comment thread.

We've been looking at adding CoComment to our site which I think is very similar. I have been using it and I like the way it records all the comments I make which I can then go back and refer to. However, it feels like we provide them with new customers and we don't get a ton back in return.

Anyone implement it or Disqus?

I'm surprised at the number of websites that hide, or as in this case do not have search functionality. Isn't that the first thing you want to do when you arrive at a forum and have a question?

do any social web apps use disqus?