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 service:

“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 writes:

“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/

This is a post from Web Dev News, a site brought to you by Xavisys Web Development.

Automattic Acquires IntenseDebate – Multisite Threaded Comments