Disqus Dumps Voting and Implements Likes

Disqus T-Shirt Found in BenSpark's Big Box of ...
Image by BenSpark via Flickr

Just caught a Tweet from Daniel Ha mentioning a new Disqus upgrade. Looks like they’ve dumped their normal ratings system for something more like FriendFeed, allowing you to Like comments. This just goes to show that FriendFeed hit the nail on the head with that simple feature as Facebook and 12seconds.tv (bumps) have both also implemented something similar.

How to Upgrade

I thought I would be able to simply go into my WP admin interface and automatically upgrade the plugin, but it turned out to not be that easy. I wasn’t given any notification that the plugin had an update available. When I accessed the Search/Install interface and searched for Disqus, I saw the updated version, but WP told me my current version was newer. I’m not sure what logic they’re using, but 2.0-xxx is definitely not newer than 2.1-xxx in my book.

I had to uninstall the version I had and manually install the new plugin.

Other Notes

According to the Disqus blog, this update speeds up Disqus in all browsers:

  • Internet Explorer is up to 5x faster
  • FireFox is up to 3x faster
  • Webkit (Safari and Chrome), and Opera is up to 2x faster

There is also a Media menu that allows you to post a video comment (via Seesmic) and Disqus indicates more media functionality may be on the way.

I’m hoping specifically for 12seconds.tv support since that would make video commentators get to the point in a hurry (12 seconds, to be exact) and not ramble on for 20 minutes. This might actually make video comments feasible to view for the average person. As it stands, people avoid looking at video comments like the plague.

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