Do you use an external blog services? We often encourage our clients to add some to their blogging toolkit (for example, Feedburner for RSS tools, Feedblitz for blog-driven newsletters), but we hadn’t considered outsourcing your comments.
We have been reading the debate regarding third party commenting apps, such as IntenseDebate, Disqus, and CoComment. They each attempt to bridge your blog with a full-service commenting solution that is managed (and promoted) by them.
As the Weblog Tools Collection team asked:
Who really owns that comment? You or the blogger? Or should there be shared ownership between the two? … Do you care who “owns” your comments? … Do you feel the need to edit comments (beyond misspellings and typos)?
They also suggested that:
Blogs should consider developing a publicly accessible commenting policy. This policy should clearly explain what you as the blog author will do with comments posted on your site, who retains ownership of those comments and explain circumstances which would require you to edit an end user’s comment.
We haven’t recommended any commenting tools to our clients. We are hesitant because your comments would reside outside your blog and you are now dependent upon that service to be up and running (or even in business). We agree that WordPress commenting can be improved, but we are reticent to give up the control of them, despite the community-building advantages that each service claims to provide.
Do you use them or would you take advantage of them?