Disqus Launching New Features Thursday

Update: Disqus has announced the details of the updates in a post on their blog.

Connecting 200 million people a month across 500 million websites and blog (including my own personal blog), Disqus is launching a slew of new features on Thursday. According to SAI, the features are said to include:

• New look-design.
• New management dashboard (yay!).
• Pro features that users can upgrade to for between $20 and $200 a month. Features like:
  • analytics,
  • single sign-on for other sites
  • more robust theme editor
  • moderation logging and reporting
• New, enhanced API for things like mobile apps.

While we’ll have to wait a few more hours until all the new features are live, but I think the bigger picture here is that more sites that are providing us with valuable add-ons to our social media life are moving to a freemium model. HootSuite is offering Basic and Pro, now Disqus, Bit.ly is on that track as wel as is Instapaper, Simplenote, and Xmarks. Personally, I think it’s about time. We’ve gotten a lot of value from these apps over the past years. Running, developing, supporting, and improving these apps require resources—resources that cost real money.

Am I going to pay for Pro features in all the services I use? Nope, I don’t need the Pro services for all things I use. But Instapaper? Simplenote? Xmarks? Oh yeah. Those are on my list of apps to support.

What freemium apps are on your: “I want to pay for to get more” list?