View from a Farley The Current Events and Opinion Weblog of Chris Farley

Intense Debate

On an average day, I hear about or encounter at least ten technology startups, but I usually don’t care most of the time. The Internet is saturated with good ideas and vast community of interested people make it easier than it otherwise would be to get people to use your product (see my previous post, The Trouble with Innovation). I usually don’t talk about the stuff that makes View from a Farley run, but Intense Debate is special, so it gets special attention.

Intense Debate, for those who don’t know, is a comment system for blogs. The major blogging engines like WordPress and Blogger come with comment systems but the comment systems are basic. Intense Debate completely replaces the standard comment system. I’ve never used Blogger, so I’m writing this from the WordPress perspective, but no matter what platform you’re using, after just one quick install, your blog has Intense Debate.

I can easily moderate and delete comments or block certain words and phrases. Users can even sign up for an Intense Debate account so their information is stored and they can access a whole world of features. For one, I can block a specific user if they are a nuissance, but on a more positive note, they can start to really interact with other users.

If you read any section of the post, you should read from this part down. Intense Debate is special because it takes several features that are available in other comment systems, improves them, and makes all of that available in one comment system. The first thing is reputation. As a user comments, (and they can comment on other blogs, using the same account) their reputation increases and other readers can rate their comments, which also gives them a reputation increase or decrease. People can reply to comments and start a thread. Intense Debate even has a feature that allows readers to follow the comments for one post or an entire blog through their favorite feed reader.

But even more important than just the features is the personal touch that they put on service and support. Earlier this week, there was a small glitch and comments weren’t working for a lot of people. I e-mailed support and got an e-mail back less than 20 minutes later from Michael Koenig, who works at Intense Debate. The issue was soon resolved and Michael was friendly and helpful.

So why do I use Intense Debate for View from a Farley? The answer gets at the heart of what I’m trying to do with View from a Farley. The views that I publish are certainly my own and are often opinionated, but I really want to get a lot of user interaction. Intense Debate is a comment system, but it says “debate” right in the name. I would very much like to start a debate in the comments or if you’d prefer to just e-mail me, that’s fine too. So don’t forget that you can always add your opinion or hit reply on someone else’s comment to respond.

And if you have your own blog, I couldn’t recommend Intense Debate more. Go to intensedebate.com to sign up. And I have it on good authority that there are exciting changes and new features coming, but shhhhhh!