When Daniel Ha and Jason Yan launched Disqus in 2007, they weren’t originally planning to create a commenting system. Ha explains in a new Medium post about the future of the service:
“We were, in fact, attempting to build out a new vision for forums. As part of that, we had the idea for blogs to embed bits and pieces of this new platform we were building. That minor feature became the comment system — and it was the thing that people seemed to like immediately.”
Visit the company’s home page today and you’ll see that it’s made a return to that original mission. It started piloting a new type of forum in November last year with two channels focused on fashion and movies.
Its latest place for curated discussions is called Squid, which allows conversations in four categories – I Made This (for showing off digital and physical creations), Ask Your Neighbor (for advice), Current Status (for sharing what you’re up to) and From Where I Stand (for personal stories).
Squid’s still a work in progress but we thought it would be the perfect venue to interview Daniel Ha. As you’ll find out below, Disqus is working on making conversation threads embeddable, but in the meantime you can see the whole chat in its original form here.
The 💜 of EU tech
The latest rumblings from the EU tech scene, a story from our wise ol' founder Boris, and some questionable AI art. It's free, every week, in your inbox. Sign up now!
What do you think of the new direction Disqus is headed in? Let us know in the…wait for it…comments.
➤ From Where I Stand: Talking To Mic Wright of The Next Web [Disqus]
Read next: 30 Little-Known Features of Popular Social Media Sites
Get the TNW newsletter
Get the most important tech news in your inbox each week.