An American blogger, technical evangelist, and author.

How did you get involved in tech?

I grew up in silicon valley, I had no choice. My Dad was an engineer and I grew up in Cupertino about a mile from Apple Computers. I had an Apple Computer in 1977, in my junior high I was in the first computer club , and I got a tour of Apple when they were one little building. So yeah, I’ve always been around tech.

What do you do now?

I explore the world for cool things on the internet, that’s really what I’m doing. I’m building distributed community called Building43 for people that are fanatical about the internet. Hope you guys will be there.

What turned you onto Disqus?

It was one of the first things that was shoving data into FriendFeed. I saw people were adding it to their blog and the comments showing up on FriendFeed right away. That federation of data across domains was pretty interesting to me. I pretty much ignored it for a long time but one thing I do I watch thousands of people around the internet and see which things get adopted and which things get talked about. Disqus kept coming up. That’s a good example, there is some pressure on me to change my behavior because people are getting excited about something. That’s how Disqus got onto my radar screen.

What did you always dream of becoming as a kid?

I wanted to be a professional photographer. I was a really hardcore photographer in high school playing with color photography while other kids were doing black and white. I quickly found out that there is very little money in photography. That is unless you get Pulitzer Prize or something. I still do photography and carry around my equipment. Now I go around and study what geeks are up too.

What one feature would you like to see on Disqus?

That’s an interesting question. I’d like to see more data about the people who are commenting. For instance, if Tim (that works for a popular publishing company) comes and leaves a comment, that’s different than Joe that leaves a comment that I don’t know. First of all I know Tim, there should be some sort of link there that says  Tim and Robert have gone back and forth with each other a while. Plus I know a lot about Tim, he runs a publishing company and he should have a built in human authority and credibility that somebody else might not have. If he comes over and writes a comment about the publishing industry. He is going to have more of an impact than other people. I’ve seen it happen over and over again where a lot of the time comments get lost or newbies don’t know who Tim is. So they don’t know that his comment has more importance or weight to it. Not saying that Joe’s comment does not have importance or weight. If Barrack Obama came over and left a comment, we would all know that he is very authoritative and yet he would be mixed in with all the comments. You could go by his comment and not know if he said something interesting.

I hope commenting systems become something that I can really get into your social graph. So I can understand you at a level that I can’t understand by just going to your facebook page.

To learn more about Robert check out his twitter, website, or Disqus Profile.

These are excerpts from a full audio interview that you may listen to here.

Cheers,

If you’ve noticed some shakiness in performance in the last couple days, we’re very sorry. If you didn’t notice, we’re sorry anyway and hope you will never get the chance to experience this.

But this post is more than an apology. I’ll attempt to explain some of the things that have been happening with our performance, as well as address some of the concerns around the consistency of our Reactions feature. Read on.

Performance

A couple mornings this week, Disqus was inexplicably slow and possibly displaying errors for a number of sites and their visitors. Absolutely unacceptable.

Why was this happening?

To be honest, we’re not exactly sure yet, but we know it doesn’t directly relate to our capacity. It’s not a completely mystery and here is what we do know:

What are we doing about it?

We are increasing capacity in the short term to help mitigate some of these issues, and we are running tests to ensure that we are not missing the long term solution. We hope to have this figured out by the weekend. In the meantime, we will be doing everything we can server and code wise to ensure that this does not continue occurring and inconveniencing sites and their visitors.

Reactions

Our Reactions feature is a popular one. We integrate with our friends at uberVU in order to provide mentions and comments of your page on other services. Lately, its performance has been inconsistent. Sometimes Reactions are found quickly, sometimes it takes days.

Why? And what are you going to do?

We think the bottleneck is our end and the way we request reactions for every new comment thread being created. There is an attack plan, though. We’ve been working on ways to approach this in a smarter manner so that this feature is more consistent and reliable.

Sorry again and thanks for the support as we get through these issues. If you have any specific questions about this, we’re happy to be answer openly and honestly.

137 Clothing bases its fashion sense from the philosophy of quantum electrodynamics. They bring together different groups of people through a constructive and creative ways like “clothing design”.

Jesse Frye, the dude behind 137 Clothing uses Twitter Comments to spread the word about new products and special promotions.

How can I do this?

Assuming that you’ve setup Disqus on your site already, follow the instructions below. If you haven’t yet, start here.

1. Authorize Twitter in your account settings or sign-in with Twitter.
   (If you don’t have a Twitter account, get one.)
2. Visit your product page with Disqus comments.
3. Write your blurb and check Tweet this comment as @twittername
   

The tweet will link back to your product post, and you’re set. You can now interact with the vastly growing realm of Twitter.

Note: If you would like to have your @twittername show up with replies, visit your site settings and enter your twitter name under “Twitter Account”.

10% off at 137 Clothing?

If you just happen to purchase some threads at 137 Clothing, enter the code “disqus” for 10% off.

Cheers,

Loïc Le Meur  is a French entrepreneur, blogger, and the founder of Seesmic.

As a child, what did you dream of becoming?

Believe it or not I was already dreaming about becoming an entrepreneur, my father and grandfather were entrepreneurs, it’s a family thing!

What made you get involved with the tech industry?

I stole my parents Macintosh in 1984 when the first Macs when released, a few years later I got a compuserve account and used Mosaic and David and Jerry’s bookmark list that became Yahoo! It has been a constant passion I have been obsessed with for many years. Moving to Silicon Valley was also a kids dream that I finally accomplished and I do not regret, I feel in the center of the Internet engine.

What/who turned you onto Disqus?

During the French Presidential campaign that I took an active role at in President Nicolas Sarkozy’s team I was getting up to 500 comments on my blog per day. I loved Disqus way of reducing the time to manage spam and nasty anonymous comments. I also met the founders and started giving a few suggestions to them, Daniel was always helpful and even implemented a few! Being friendly is a real plus for a company and Disqus is definitely friendly.

What inspired you to start Seesmic?

I wanted to know my online friends better and video is definitely a way to know them. Then we saw so much growth in Twhirl that we started focusing on helping everyone building their own community in general and not only in video.

Is today’s Seesmic and its community anything like you imagined it to be on its inception?

Clearly not, I feel most people have difficulties to have their image “saved” in video on the web and  we are taking this into account by helping them grow their own community rather than have them join the Seesmic community. Private videos are already pretty big I think video conversations will be big in groups amongst existing communities. Having said that, there are amazing friendships that were born on Seesmic and most are still friends now, they enjoy seeing each other in real like from the almost real life that video conversation made possible amongst them.

How would you improve the current integration of Seesmic?

I would make a single sign on between Disqus and Seesmic credentials.

What one feature would you like to see in Disqus. Besides Seemic?

Disqus in Seesmic Desktop! Let’s do it!

If you would like to learn more about Loic visit his website, twitter, or on Seesmic.

Cheers,

Twitter is a fast growing service that millions of people (including all of us here at Disqus) use to easily update and get updates from friends. We recently released the ability to tweet out comments for commenters with a Disqus Profile. This allowed people to share their comments on Twitter and bring in new voices to the conversation (see this in action).

Today, we released a new feature for publishers: Twitter Sign-in.

Fortunately, with such a descriptive name, there’s not much explanation needed. It is what it sounds like: sites are now able to allow people to use their Twitter profiles to leave comments. And yup, these commenters will also be able to tweet out to their updates. No Disqus Profile necessary.

Disqus makes use of Twitter’s OAuth support to securely authenticate without sharing any passwords. Similarly to our support for Facebook Connect, Twitter Sign-in makes it easier and quicker for people to jump into a discussion. To enable Twitter Sign-in, publishers should proceed to Admin/Settings and enable the feature under Options.

For commenters, just look for the Twitter Sign-in button on sites that have this enabled.

If you already have a Disqus Profile, add Twitter in your account/services to be able to tweet comments with every comment.

Bonus! Improvements to Tweeting Comments

We’ve also added a new option for publishers. You can now assign a Twitter account to your site’s settings, which will be @included in the tweet that commenters send out from your site.

For example, we’ve added @disqus to this blog’s settings. Now for every comment that people tweet (which aren’t replies), it will be formatted:

RE: @disqus Tweeting from the Disqus blog. http://disq.us/2gx

If no twitter account is specified for the site, the default option is the site administrators twitter account. You can find this option in Admin/Settings.

Enjoy!

A freelance engineer simplifying the world of media infrastructures.

What draws you to the internet?

The ability to finish other people’s sentences, en mass. Like right now, I’m wandering around my house, feeding the dog, holding my netbook like it’s a hardback. I get to read a book and write it at the same time.

What do you do for a living?

I setup and troubleshoot media workflows for small production companies and individual artists. My business card says Media Engineer on it.

What does a Media Engineer do exactly?

I am not drawn so much to the design side of media, but toward building media infrastructure that allows people to communicate more quickly and interact with media in more personal ways… I deal more with metadata about media than media itself. And I can recover your files if you accidentally empty the trash.

How did you find Disqus?

I started noticing that many of my favorite blogs were using Disqus: scriptingnews.com and laughingsquid.com are two that stand out in my memory. I had recently begun writing my own blogging software (still in its infancy), and since I was just cutting my teeth on programming web apps, I was having trouble writing my own commenting system. I knew that I wanted trackbacks, spam protection, and conversation that traversed multiple sites: Disqus delivers all that in spades.

Are you currently working on any projects?

Currently I’m working on a bunch of things: a community television station prototype here in Mississippi: fondren.tv and I’m brain trusting with @jeffreytaylor and many others to form the Online Video Arts League to promote the artistic validity of online video. This week, I’ve devoted most of my time to playing around with kaltura.org ‘s Community Edition. They’ve got some super sweet software.

What’s your favorite 80′s song?

Either Echo and the Bunnymen’s “My Kingdom” or Nirvana’s “School” — I’m split.

What one feature would you like to see Disqus create?

I’d like to be able to subscribe to an RSS feed for comments on specific posts. But I have a feeling that your API would make this pretty easy to roll on my own.

What’s your favorite feature on Disqus?

I have to say that it’s great not to have to log in to the blogs that I visit to comment… Since I started using Disqus, I’m not nearly as introverted.

To learn more about Andrew visit his twitter, website or his Disqus Profile.

Cheers,

A Science Fiction/Fantasy novelist living in Alberta, Canada.

What do you love about writing?

I love world building. I could spend hours crafting tiny details in a fantasy or science fiction world that may not even make it into a book or story. It’s a way for me to show case ideas, ideals or problems, but it’s also a lot of fun. It’s hard for me to describe the feeling you get when you’ve created a world, even if it’s based off of the known like in Science Fiction. The best example is that it’s like when we were kids and we built houses and buildings out of blocks. You got to put the windows and doors wherever you wanted to and you knew it was good because you took the time and energy to make sure it was.

Are there any other writers in the family?

Actually, my mother used to write when I was little but she stopped when I was in middle school. That said, she was very supportive of my dream to write and my entire family (extended as well) have been my biggest fans and cheerleaders.

What inspires you to write?

Day to day it’s as simple as being in the right mind set, good or bad. When something good happens I’m automatically in a creative mood. When something bad happens I use writing as a way to deal with it or make myself feel better. Writing has always been a way for me to process what I see around me, make sense of it. My greatest ideas though, come to me in my dreams. I never go to bed without a notepad on the bed stand.

Who’s your favorite author?

Picking one is too hard. The author who made me curious about Science Fiction and Fantasy was Ann Maxwell in her book “Timeshadow Rider”, but I learnt how to build complex and beautiful worlds from Anne McCaffrey. Steven King taught me to embrace the gritty dark side of reality, and Arthur C. Clark showed me how to fall in love with a character despite their faults. So, is four favourites ok?

Do you just write for a living  or do you have a day job?

I would love to write for a living, but unfortunately I do have a day job. I work for the government in her Alberta, Canada. It’s a typical desk job, but after working in lots of other office jobs I finally found one that isn’t really stressful. Less stress means I have energy at the end of the day to write and that’s the most important thing.

How did you find Disqus?

I was looking for a free webhost and one I was checking out recommended Disqus for managing your comments. I was sceptical at first but then I started noticing it everywhere and realized it really does create another community layer to your site (plus it’s easy). So I added it to my website (now on wordpress) and haven’t looked back since.

What one feature within Disqus do you use most?

Obviously the comments. But a close second would be the facebook integration. It’s very helpful to know that a reader who comes to my site from facebook can leave a comment without having to register for something new. I’m also loving the new Twitter integration you guys announced on Tuesday.

What one feature could Disqus make that would help writers like yourself?

One thing that would help writers? Well, writers like to show off if they get really great reviews. And if those reviews happen to come in as comments it would be great if there was a way to flag them and have a widget or something to show off just those special comments.

What’s The Seven Deadly Sins book about?

The book that was recently released is a Flash Fiction anthology. This anthology has eight short stories, each one about one of the Seven Deadly Sins (except for gluttony which has two stories because of a tie). I have two short stories in the book, one for Envy and Gluttony. All of the stories show the sinner or sinners getting caught or entangled, but it may not be obvious. My Envy story is about a space explorer who hates the perfect alien race he explores with, and Gluttony is about the three little pigs with a twist.

What inspired you to write this book?

The publisher of Absolute Xpress was interested in testing out a Flash Fiction anthology. The four women who are in this anthology are all from a writing group here in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. We’ve been together for a long time and since he knew of our unique group he thought we would be good test subjects. He gave us the topic and the deadline and we had to write one for story for each of the sins and he would pick the best. As for inspiration for the individual stories, Envy came to me as a dream and Gluttony was inspired by someone eating pork in the cubicle next to me at work and me being desperate for an idea.

Where can we purchase this book?

You can get this book through the publisher’s website as an e-book or off Amazon.com and have the book shipped to you. This is called the direct-to-reader approach, a new way of distribution that some publishers are taking advantage of. This means that it will not be found in book stores, but it also means you get a better price.

Is there anything else you would like to add?

The service with Disqus has been great, and you guys are always coming up with great new ways to connect users to each other. I look forward to seeing what Disqus comes up with next.

Also if you’re interested in writing Flash Fiction, you can check out the second Flash Fiction Challenge being put on by the publisher Absolute Xpress. The theme this time is “Creatures of the Night”.

Thanks for the interview, Giannii.

If you would like to learn more about Tina visit her website, twitter, or Disqus Profile.

Cheers,

We’ve rolled out a couple more updates, check them out!

Blacklisting

Previously, backlisting a commenter would place his or her comment in the “Unapproved” pile. We’ve learned that this behavior may not be the best way. When you, the moderator, blacklist someone, you really want them gone! We’ve made an update: commenters who are blacklisted will no longer be able to comment at all. They will receive this message:

As before, you can blacklist commenters by clicking “More” on individual comments, or right here here: http://disqus.com/admin/permissions

New Languages Added

• Romanian, thanks to Stefan Voinea
• Indonesian, thanks to Teguh
• Spanish (Argentina), thanks to Ulises Juárez Polanco

“Facebook User” Fix

Has this happened to you before? After you connect with Facebook and post a comment, does your name and picture not correctly show up?

It’s caused by a privacy setting in your Facebook settings. You may wish to update your privacy settings to allow Disqus to pull the right information.

• Visit: http://www.facebook.com/privacy/?view=search
• Look for Search Discovery
• Set Search Visibility to “Everyone”
• Make sure “Create a public search listing” is checked

Cheers,

We’ve been listening to your feedback and as a result, we have made a number of changes we’d like to share with you.

Twitter:

• Tweeting comments is the ability in which commenters are able to tweet out every time they leave a comment, with a link back to the article. Disqus is now using Twitter’s OAuth support for tweeting comments. You may now securely use Twitter with Disqus without entering in your password.
  
  If you’ve added your Twitter credentials beforehand, you’ll just need just reauthorize using OAuth here:
  http://disqus.com/account/services/
• When replying to a comment, you will now see this reply format show up on twitter.
  Example Tweet: RE: @fredwilson I saw Marcy contribute to the thread and I think that’s awesome! Also… this is a semi-worthless comment… http://disq.us/39

Mini-Profiles:

Many of you have requested to have a more compact mini-profile and your wish is our command. Hovering over a commenter’s picture now drops down a compact drop-down profile, while clicking on the picture opens up the pop-up profile.

• Guest: Commenter has not claimed his or her comments.
  Where do I claim my comments? http://disqus.com/claim
• Registered: Commenter is registered with Disqus but has not verified his or her email address.
  Where do I verify my email? http://disqus.com/verify
• Verified: Commenter is registered with Disqus and has verified his or her email address. This email address is now securely attached to this profile.

Cheers,