Automattic Acquires IntenseDebate – Multisite Threaded Comments
Automattic, the company behind the development of the popular WordPress content management system, announced today that they acquired IntenseDebate, an online service that provides a system for threaded commenting and tracks user activity across multiple websites. The financial terms related to the agreement were not released, but the announcement comes after several moves by WordPress to acquire strategic companies whose services expand the core functionality of the CMS. Examples of this are the previous acquisitions of bbPress (a forum software company), Gravatar (cross site avatar support), and Ping-O-Matic (pingbacks). IntenseDebate announced on their blog that they were happy to be joining the Automattic team, and would be going back into development to build new features for the system. Some of IntenseDebate’s functionality is slated to become part of the WordPress code base, with a plugin available for integrating its more advanced services into the CMS.
Jon Fox, a 23 year old Computer Science graduate student at Washington University in St. Louis and co-founder of IntenseDebate, was interviewed last month by Center Networks, where he described the service1:
“IntenseDebate is a replacement to your stock comment system on blogs and websites. We provide a tool to better facilitate community and interaction by adding loads of new features. Some of my favorites include Reply-by-email (reply to a comment by replying in email to the email notification), threading, voting, universal profiles, reputation, and the ability to track a user and/or topic across blogs.”
According to the interview, the IntenseDebate team consists of only six people:
• CEO – Tom Keller
• CTO – Jon Fox
• Graphics/Design – Isaac Keyet
• Voice of the users – Michael Koenig
• Software Engineer – Austin Hallock
• Software Engineer – Mehmet Alkanlar
The company has seen a regular increase in user statistics since the service was launched, according to Compete going from around 25,000 views per month in April to 350,000 views in August. Overall, the site boasted a 2505% increase in traffic in 2008.
The main competition to IntenseDebate is Disqus, which Compete ranks at #1,797 compared to IntenseDebate at #5,000. In comparison, Disqus went from about 25,000 views per month in August of 2007 to nearly 900,000 views last month, a rise of 3042% over the year. The surge in popularity driving both sites is definitely something WordPress is looking to tap into.
Don Dodge, part of the Microsoft Emerging Business Team, writes on his blog of an email interchange with IntenseDebate CEO Tom Keller. He writes2:
“Earlier this week I sent a note to Tom Keller, CEO of IntenseDebate, and asked him for reasons why I should use IntenseDebate. The three reasons he gave me were almost the same three reasons that Fred Wilson cites in his post; (‘Three Reasons to Use Disqus’)
1) Threading comments makes them easier to read,
2) Better user interaction and community,
3) More comments, maybe 5X more comments.”
Based on this analysis, which seems to be correct, WordPress users can expect more comment activity on their posts following the addition of the new services from IntenseDebate. It appears that Automattic has made a great choice in solidifying the platform to ride this continuing internet trend.
Announcement:
http://www.intensedebate.com/blog/2008/09/23/automattic-acquires-intensedebate/
- http://www.centernetworks.com/intensedebate-jon-fox [↩]
- http://dondodge.typepad.com/the_next_big_thing/2008/05/three-reasons-t.html [↩]
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17 Responses to “Automattic Acquires IntenseDebate – Multisite Threaded Comments”
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I’m quite happy about this deal. I hadn’t even heard of IntenseDebate until yesterday, but it looks like a great product. Now Automattic is taking it over, which mean it’ll have even more muscle behind it. The best part is that Automattic said:
Minor correction. CTO and co-founder is Jon Fox, not Allen Fox.
The IntenseDebate team couldn’t be more excited about this acquisition though. This will open up completely new possibilities and we’re very much looking forward to working with the rest of the Automattic team.
Thank you for the correction. I fixed it in the article. I’m excited to see where this goes, and I’m excited to try the product as well. I only wish I had heard about you guys sooner, which is one of the things a partnership with Automattic will probably fix.
Good luck, and maybe you can come back and write an article here on what it’s like to merge with Automattic.
This looks like a dang good deal! Can’t wait to see this in play :)
Wow!
Terrific!
What does everyone think of the new Intense Debate comments system in use here?
i can use this as my reference in reblogging my blog, i may install intensedebate
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i can use this as my reference in reblogging my blog, i may install intensedebate
I really like the commenting system here… its very user-friendly and i like the interface.
m happy for this tricks , i just make some updates to my plugins
Thanks for sharing like this information, I can apply it to my blogs as a reference too. it really help to us,,,
Everyone ca use this thanks for sharing..
Intense Debate is a slick commenting system, great to see them pick this up.
hh. bookmarked
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