From time to time we will refer to the fun things happening around the Intense Debate network. After navigating around some of the sites using the Intense Debate comment system, I realized a lot is going on.

Dumb Little Man is a great blog and has been on a roll this week with a few articles making it to the frontpage of Digg. I asked Jay how he does it, but he won’t reveal his secret. My guess is that great content plays a role.

One of our newest ID’ers is called Drinks Are On Me. If you are interested in food and drink, I recommend it! After reading a few articles I felt incredibly hungry.

Brad Feld is blogging about email and who is talking about it. The follow up post should be very interesting.

Political Grind expanded their network. Congrats to the guys there. They were one of our early adopters and have seen a 110% increase in their comments since installing ID. We definitely don’t take full credit as the people behind PG produce great content.

Micah Baldwin shared an excellent personal story of success and failure over at Learn To Duck. If you are part of a startup or thinking about starting up a company you should definitely read this.

Fraser from Adaptive Blue put up a great post on his personal blog, Disruptive Thoughts, about his trip to the Boulder/Denver area. His conclusion: it is a great place for a tech startup. I couldn’t agree more.

There are many great things people are talking about around our network and they are using the Intense Debate comment system to continue the conversation. If something remarkable is happening at your blog, email me (josh at intensedebate dot com) and we might feature you in a future edition.

Posted by Isaac Keyet in News

Last night we made making our latest release which includes several additions, fixes, and features.

The highlights include our new install method which is designed for a better user experience and to make the install more seemless and intuitive.

Next, our comment system has undergone a facelift to make it simpler and easier to use. This comes with ability for users to substitute several buttons with text links. The effects of this change create a dramatically less intimidating comment system for publishers who feel that less is more. This has been one of the most requested items by our users. The feedback we received raised the priority of simplifying our comment system.

There are also options for small, medium, and large versions for those that would like to customize the size of the comment system.

Another requested feature since our open beta launch has been the ability to customize your OpenID for a user account. Once again, this is based on user feedback, which we love.

Finally, there is now an ability to edit the URL, RSS, and title for a blog after install. This was definitely needed as sometimes we all make a spelling error or need to change our blog title later on.

On a side note, we unfortunately had a couple bugs this morning from this release. We worked as quickly as we could to solve the problem and I apologize for any inconvenience. If anyone sees any further problems please let us know (contactus at intensedebate dot com).

If you have any feedback on this release or would like to shape our next release, feel free to ping us or make a request in the forums.

Update: To change the size of your comment system, visit the comment theme link under your blog’s tab. You will also find a way to convert from buttons to text links on this page if you are looking for a simpler interface.

Posted by Isaac Keyet in News

It has been a great week here at Intense Debate. We launched our product into an open beta on Tuesday morning with great coverage:

TechCrunch

Read/Write Web

Webware

Among others….

Our launch accomplished many goals for us. We continue to show that we truly care about publishers and commenters alike through our support for OpenID and data migration. Marshall Kirkpatrick from Read/Write Web had a great take on this aspect:

“The single most important thing about Intense Debate is its data export options. If you are using the service in WordPress or Blogger (more platforms to be supported later) and you decide you want to stop using Intense Debate, you can export your comments for import into your native blogging software’s comments database.This is the kind of option that makes all the difference in user adoption – I will let value from my work accumulate in your service if I know I can get it back out again if I so chose. Thank you Intese Debate! I ask every web app I profile about data export and the vast majority just tell me “oh, we’re working on that.”

While not perfect, our importers and exporters still offer an exceptional service to publishers. We find that releasing our solutions quickly enables us to improve even faster.  Why spend all our time perfecting a feature before we even know if it’s in an implementation that our users want?  We believe in letting our users shape our products instead.  We’ve already gotten tons of great feedback (and even help) from our users in regard to the importers and exporters. Thanks to all who have participated (and a special thanks to Coyotesqrl for all his time and effort).
We have set the standard and now others must rise to our level of openness. This is great for all publishers. At Intense Debate, we work very hard to find out what our publishers want and take extra care to execute upon those wants. In the end, everyone benefits.

We’ll keep leading the way, stay tuned. As always, feedback is very welcome!

Posted by Isaac Keyet in News

We’re proud to announce the newest addition to the Intense Debate team, Michael Koenig. Michael joins us as our Director of Business Development and Marketing. Many of you might have already had communications with him as he’s been handling support for a few weeks now while he joins our family. He’s also added some zest to our blog and added a twitter account for Intense Debate (twitter.com/intensedebate). If you have any feature requests, bug reports, or anything else, feel free to contact him at michael at intensedebate dot com.

Here’s a quick bio from our about us page:

Originally from Michigan, with a BA in Philosophy from The University of Colorado at Boulder, Michael brings a certain je ne sais quoi to Intense Debate. Part business development, marketing guru, entrepreneur, philosopher, and musician, Michael has proven vital in the company’s growth and development.

Glad to have you Michael!

Posted by Jon Fox in News