Disqus
| Disqus-logo | |
| Type of business | Private |
|---|---|
| Available in | Multilingual |
| Founded | San Francisco, California, United States (October 30, 2007) |
| Headquarters | San Francisco, California, United States |
| Area served | Worldwide |
| Founder(s) | Daniel Ha Jason Yan |
| Key people | Daniel Ha (CEO) Jason Yan (CTO) |
| Industry | Internet |
| Employees | 25 (2011) |
| URL | disqus.com |
| Registration | Optional |
| Users | 50 million |
| Launched | October 2007 |
| Current status | Active |
Disqus is an online discussion and commenting service for websites and online communities that uses a networked platform. The company’s platform includes various features, such as social integration, social networking, user profiles, spam and moderation tools, analytics, email notifications, and mobile commenting. It was founded in 2007 by Daniel Ha and Jason Yan as a Y Combinator startup.
Disqus ranks #1 in Quantcast's U.S. networks with 144 million monthly unique U.S. visits.[2] Disqus is featured on many major publications, such as Engadget, CNN, Fox News, Daily Telegraph and IGN and about 750,000 blogs and websites.[3] It competes with IntenseDebate, Livefyre and Echo.
History
Disqus was first developed in the summer of 2007 as a Y Combinator startup headed by Daniel Ha and Jason Yan, both of whom were undergraduates at University of California, Davis. Disqus was first incorporated and launched on October 30, 2007.
Financing
In early 2011, Disqus raised $10 million in funding from North Bridge Venture Partners and Union Square Venture Partners.[4]
Growth
In November 2010, shortly after celebrating its third anniversary, Disqus announced hitting 200 million unique visitors/month. Seven months later in May 2011, Disqus announced approaching 500 million unique visitors/month, in addition to consistent 500% traffic, user, and community growth for the previous year, bringing its total counts to about 750,000 websites and 50 million registered users[3][5]
According to a March 2011 study by Lijit, Disqus is used by 75% of websites who use a third party commenting or discussion system.[6]
Technology
The Disqus comment widget is written in JavaScript and is powered by a back end primarily written in Django.
Business model
Disqus operates on the freemium financial model, similar to Dropbox and Evernote. The service is free to use for both commenters and websites.
Starting in November 2010 Disqus began officially offering three add-on packages for websites: Plus for $19/month, Pro for $199/month, and VIP starting at $999/month.[7] In mid-2011, the Plus package was removed and Pro was increased to $299/month.
Aggregate information about registered users (sites visited, etc.) is sold to other corporations.
Functionality
Language support
Both the Disqus website and comment system are translated in over 60 languages.[8]
Browser support
Disqus works in all major web browsers, including Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome, Safari, and Opera. On mobile devices, Disqus currently only supports browsers using the WebKit layout engine.[9]
References
- ^ "disqus.com – Traffic Details from Alexa". Alexa Internet. Retrieved October 18, 2011.
- ^ "Disqus Network Traffic and Demographic Statistics by Quantcast". Retrieved October 18, 2011.
- ^ a b "The Numbers of Disqus". May 4, 2011. Retrieved October 18, 2011.
- ^ "Commenting startups Disqus celebrates its birthday with $10M more". May 4, 2011. Retrieved October 18, 2011.
- ^ "PyCon 2011 Scaling Disqus". March 13, 2011. Retrieved October 18, 2011.
- ^ "Lijit Study Shows Publisher Adoption of Social Media Tools Grows 80%". March 2, 2011. Retrieved October 18, 2011.
- ^ "The new DISQUS: Add-ons, Analytics, APIs, and more". Disqus Product Blog. November 17, 2010. Retrieved October 18, 2011.
- ^ "Disqus Comments: Translated in over 40 languages". November 2, 2009. Retrieved October 18, 2011.
- ^ "Which mobile devices does Disqus work with?". Retrieved October 18, 2011.
