September 23, 2008

IntenseDebate Acquired by Automattic


Some news in the blogging world today...the blog comment system IntenseDebate has just been acquired by Automattic (the company behind WordPress). IntenseDebate is currently revamping its servers and features and has temporarily moved back into a private beta during the overhaul.

I got the announcement today from the fellas at IntenseDebate. Here it is in full:

"It's a very exciting day here at IntenseDebate! We're extremely stoked to announce that as of today IntenseDebate has been acquired by Automattic. That's right, IntenseDebate is now an Automattic Joint!

Don't worry, IntenseDebate isn't going anywhere. IntenseDebate is still the perfect comment system for your blog or website regardless of the platform it uses. We will still enhance and encourage conversation on your blog while we increase your reader engagement and community. We're just going to be a whole lot bigger!

You can expect our service to be quicker and offer a more robust feature set. We will continue to improve our service for all blog platforms including Blogger, Typepad, Movable Type, Tumblr, and others with more on the way. You can also look forward to advanced integrations with other Automattic products like Gravatar, Akismet, and of course WordPress.

This is good news all around, especially with our new distribution possibilities. Now we have the opportunity to put IntenseDebate in front of more eyes than ever before. You can expect more blog readers to already have IntenseDebate accounts and you will be able to comment on more blogs than you can imagine!

We love your support and couldn't have gotten here with out you! Thanks again for being so awesome and helping us spread the word! You can look forward to even more comments and page views in the future! Feel free to check out our acquisition post and leave a us comment.

Congratulations to everyone!
The Fellas at IntenseDebate"


Why It's Good For WordPress

This acquisition is definitely good for WordPress. It's no secret that WordPress has been in need of an updated comment system for quite some time. Now that need will no longer be there.

WordPress 2.7 will include some of IntenseDebate's comment system features by default, one of which includes threaded comments. I use IntenseDebate here on this blog, and I can tell you from firsthand experience that threaded comments rock!

WordPress 2.7 will also include a plugin that will integrate many of the other great IntenseDebate features, such as commenting across multiple blogs. With these new features and additions, I think WordPress users will be very happy indeed.

Why It's Good for IntenseDebate

On the IntenseDebate side, this acquisition means that you'll be seeing IntenseDebate a lot more often as the joining of the two outfits opens up distribution possibilities. This means that you should be able to use your IntenseDebate profile on a lot more blogs. A definite plus.

There will also be tighter integration with some of the other Automattic joints, such as Akismet (Automattic's distributed and learning anti-spam system) and Gravatar (their globally recognized avatar).

The IntenseDebate name and logo will remain the same, and you'll still be able to use the IntenseDebate comment system on many of the popular blogging platforms (TypePad, Blogger, Tumblr and Movable Type), with even more blogging platforms to be added to the mix.

Happy for the Future of Blogging

The folks at Automattic have already done some great work on projects like Akismet, WordPress.com, WordPress.org and bbPress, not to mention the many WordPress plugins they've written (Google AdSense for Feeds, Secure Admin, Secure Admin, No Self Ping and Batcache, to name a few).

They have an excellent track record and I'm really excited to see what the future of blogging holds for everyone. This is an acquisition that I am definitely pleased to see, so long as the two services remain separate, as they say they will.

Remaining "separate" is very important for many bloggers. For example, I use Blogger here for this blog...so the last thing I'd want to happen would be losing my IntenseDebate comment system due to some "corporate" BS. I guess we shall see. But so far, so good.


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