Disqus Ads Crossroads – To Pay or Not to Pay?
The recent changes in Disqus plugin have created chaos amongst those who are currently using it. Disqus is a major player and game changer for websites that are interactive enough to receive comments from their clients. Though the native WordPress comments plugin is available, most of website owners find it too outdated to work around. Also, the native WordPress comments plugin is not that user-friendly.
What is Disqus? Why is it Popular?
Disqus is one of the largest and most well known comment systems on the Web. Disqus is popular because of its basic features that enable commenting, powerful moderation, admin tools, spam filtering, blacklisting and email notification. Based on its ability to improve the web comments and discussions, it is one of those essential tools without which one cannot feel the professionalism in websites. Disqus is available free for use and is made available in an easy to install plugin mode.
Popularity of Disqus
Though the Disqus plugin is rated 3.2 stars out of 5, it is still used actively on around 20,000 sites, a huge number. There are a number of major companies which use Disqus for the management of discussions and comments on their sites.
They include:
1. SlashGear
2. 9to5Google
3. Droid Life
4. The Atlantic
5. Search Engine Roundtable
6. PBS
7. Wired
8. Tuts+
Disqus Management:
According to Disqus website, the company handles a huge number of clients with nearly 1.6 million daily comments and 0.56 billion daily page views. They work in more than 150 countries in the world. A major website claims that that majority of businesses from USA use Disqus for enabling comments and discussion threads on their website. Along with USA, other major countries are United Kingdom, France, Italy, Australia, Netherlands, Spain, Canada, Germany, Japan, China and India.
Disqus Updates on Ads:
As per the previous communication provided by the company, they declared that the basic feature will be available freely for use. They also declared that the basic feature can be downloaded in the form of a plugin or universal code and that it comes with an advertising feature. This includes advertisements from the company. Along with this, the company mentioned that for a minimal amount of money, the sites can remove those ads which will be disclosed sooner.
If we look at the present updates, some sources claim that the amount to remove such ads will be $10/ month. The exact declaration of changes is expected to be fully enabled by March, 2017. Sources also claim that this minimal subscription fee will be at an organizational level and not at website level. Though some of Disqus employees have revealed that these ads will most likely market about the new features of Disqus and will not have any random spam click-bait ads.
And the best part of this is, that they have promised to introduced some of the premium features which will include enhanced single-on, Robust moderation Tools like shadow banning, in-depth audience analytics, content promotion and various subscriptions. Overall, this seems like a good deal which will help Disqus to grow along with the other major companies.
What do you think? Let us know in the comment section below 🙂