Internet-wide @Mentions
There is a relatively new candidate recommendation from the W3C for a game changing social web specification called Webmention which essentially makes it possible to do Twitter-like @mentions (or Medium-style) across the internet from site to site (as opposed to simply within a siloed site/walled garden like Twitter).
Webmentions would allow me to write a comment to someone else’s post on my own Tumblr site, for example, and then with a URL of the site I’m replying to in my post which serves as the @mention, the other site (which could be on WordPress, Drupal, Tumblr, or anything really) which also supports Webmentions could receive my comment and display it in their comment section.
Given the tremendous number of sites (and multi-platform sites) on which Disqus operates, it would be an excellent candidate to support the Webmention spec to allow a huge amount of inter-site activity on the internet. First it could include the snippet of code for allowing the site on which a comment is originally written to send Webmentions and secondly, it could allow for the snippet of code which allows for receiving Webmentions. The current Disqus infrastructure could also serve to reduce spam and display those comments in a pretty way. Naturally Disqus could continue to serve the same social functionality it has in the past.
Aggregating the conversation across the Internet into one place
Making things even more useful, there’s currently a third party free service called Brid.gy which uses open APIs of Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Google+, and Flickr to bootstrap them to send these Webmentions or inter-site @mentions. What does this mean? After signing up at Bridgy, it means I could potentially create a post on my Disqus-enabled Tumblr (WordPress, or other powered site), share that post with its URL to Facebook, and any comments or likes made on the Facebook post will be sent as Webmentions to the comments section on my Tumblr site as if they’d been made there natively. (Disqus could add the metadata to indicate the permalink and location of where the comment originated.) This means I can receive comments on my blog/site from Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, G+, etc. without a huge amount of overhead, and even better, instead of being spread out in multiple different places, the conversation around my original piece of content could be conglomerated with the original!
Comments could be displayed inline naturally, and likes could be implemented as UI facepile either above or below the typical comment section. By enabling the sending/receiving of Webmentions, Disqus could further corner the market on comments. Even easier for Disqus, a lot of the code has already been written and is open source .
Web 3.0?
I believe that Webmention, when implemented, is going to cause a major sea-change in the way people use the web. Dare I say Web3.0?!
It exists. See: https://disqus.com/home/discussion/channel-channelchat/community_roundtable_the_most_popular_discussion_on_disqus/
O Caos é Eletrônico, I think you read about the concept of @mentions and stopped there. If you re-read it, you’ll hopefully see the MUCH broader underlying point.
I’m aware that one can do @mentions within Disqus, but they’re limited to activity within Disqus itself. This is the same thing as @mentions on Twitter only working within Twitter.
What I’m suggesting above is that they support a broader open spec that allows @mentions between other services. So, for example, I could @mention someone on Disqus from Twitter and potentially vice versa. If you can only have conversations with people on Disqus, you’re limited by how big and popular Disqus is. If you can @mention people outside of the Disqus echosystem, the product becomes that much more powerful!
Imagine if every blog on the planet could @mention every other website, or even Twitter or Facebook users across platforms? Why should you rely on everyone being on the same platform to be able to communicate with them?
Read What is Discourse? (Discourse – Civilized Discussion)
As I look at this it makes me wonder when small, single-purpose services might allow themselves to be white listed and/or custom styled to live on a users personal domain, yet still look like they’re part and parcel of that user’s native site.
As an example, Disqus and Webmention.io are interesting examples of how a company could specialize into handling comments for user’s sites. These two are both doing things very differently and at much different price points. Disqus is large and bloated and seems to have quite innovating and iterating. I have to wonder what it would look like with more players and more competition in the space?
In fact, I’m still wondering why hasn’t Disqus picked up and run away with the Webmention spec?
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Replied to Not enough people want Webmentions by Jeremy Cherfas (Jeremy Cherfas)
Given that it’s a paid service, I do see the potential that it could be viewed as an odd bit of competition. But at the same time, if it were my business, I’d take some leadership over the topic and work at building what might bring the product more value. Customers aren’t always communicative and building the things based on stated customer desires isn’t always the best way to go because the customer doesn’t always know what they want. A service provider needs to know the space, potential values, and provide the vision to get their company where it needs to be. Given this, their response seems to be a bit of a cop out. I remember thinking much the same thing about Disqus a few years back. I suspect if they knew their businesses well they’d see the imminent value and know that “if you build it [t]he[y] will come.“