Last week we released our Twitter integration – an option in your IntenseDebate profile that sends a notification via Twitter when you post a new comment using IntenseDebate.

You all sent us some great feedback and we’ve rolled out a couple of enhancements. The main attraction this week is the comment-by-comment tweet option. Instead of having tweets posted for all of your comments, you can choose to tweet on a comment-by-comment basis. This option is available in your IntenseDebate user profile. Just enter in your Twitter credentials and select “Tweet about new comments.” When you post a new comment you’ll have the option to tweet about that comment. Also, now when a notification is sent the tweet source will read “from IntenseDebate” (screenshot below). The feature itself is cool, but it’s the little things that really sweeten the deal.

We’re pretty stoked about this new feature. It’s another step in bringing the comments you make into the light. Your Twitter followers are interested in what you have to say on Twitter, and we’re willing to bet that they’re interested in what else you have to say. Take yesterday for example, we published a post about who owns your comments and we got some great responses to it. We watched as some of our regular users posted comments and then listened as all of the phones in the office received SMS notifications. Needless to say, there were a lot of new faces voicing their opinions in what turned out to be a hell of an intense debate.

Keeping your Twitter followers up to date on what you’re commenting on is just one of the perks. IntenseDebate Twitter notifications also help drive additional traffic to blog posts (both old and new). Jon Fox, our rock star developer, published a post in March about receiving Feedburner and Twitter stats by email, and had pretty much forgotten it existed…until 2 days ago. Somehow David Cohen (founder of TechStars and the man who brought IntenseDebate to life) came across Jon’s post and commented on it. A new comment tweet was sent to David’s Twitter followers, and Jon’s long forgotten post got some fresh life, new comments, and an increase in traffic. Not too shabby.

What I’m getting at is this: IntenseDebate Twitter integration rocks. Stop reading this and go check it out.

Jon has already forgotten about his post. Such is the life of a rock star (developer)…

Posted by Michael Koenig in features

We’ve made some changes to our OpenID 2.0 support. Our OpenID integration has been live for some time now and we’ve had some excellent feedback from our users on how to improve it. So we took it back into the lab for a bit of an overhaul and it came out being much more user friendly. We’re pleased to announce that we have enhanced our OpendID 2.0 integration to support more providers. Thanks again for the great feedback!

Posted by Michael Koenig in features

It’s Wednesday and here at Intense Debate that means we rolled out some new features in last night’s release. As always, kudos to everyone here for cranking out these sweet features.

Reply-By-Email
We’re extremely pleased with the beta features we released last week. Many thanks to our beta testers for their excellent feedback! Thanks to their help we’ve rolled out Reply-By-Email. Now blog owners will be able to reply to comments made on their blogs, approve friend requests and moderate comments all via email.

While this feature can be used with all email clients, you may have to include !END at the end of your reply. If you use any of the following mail clients you do not need to enter !END at the end of your message: Outlook, AOL, Gmail, Hotmail/Windows Live, Yahoo!, Blackberry, iPhone, Apple Mail, Windows Mobile. Again, for all other email clients you must include !END at the end of your reply. Please let us know which mail clients you use and we’ll work on integrating them. Also, please do not remove any of the original message text from your reply. If you’re mail client is in a language other than English, this feature might not work. Our apologies.

Twitter Integration
We’re really excited about this feature. Now when you comment using IntenseDebate, you can opt to have a notification sent via Twitter. You have full control over the wording of your notifications. For instance, my notifications read, “Commented using IntenseDebate on %POST% / %BLOG% %TINYURL%” But again, you can have the text be whatever you want. Pretty nifty.

To enable this feature, please visit your edit profile page. On the right side of the page you’ll find a list of other networks where you can enter your profile URL’s for members of the IntenseDebate community to check out. Below this you’ll find our Twitter section (screenshot below). To enable Twitter integration, enter your Twitter profile URL and select “tweet about my new comments.” Of course, you may want to use caution with this feature for your followers’ sake.

Me.dium & Orkut Integration
Again you’ve requested it, so you’ve got it! You can now include your Me.dium and orkut profile information in your IntenseDebate profile. Here’s a bit about each if you’re not familiar with these services. Be sure to check them out!

orkut – “orkut’s social network can help you maintain existing relationships with pictures and messages, and establish new ones by reaching out to people you’ve never met before.”

Me.dium – “Me.dium is an add-on for your web browser that allows you to surf, chat and experience the web with your friends in real-time. Bump into friends and interact with the crowds just like you would in the real world.”

We’ve got a ton of awesome features coming down the line that are going to blow your mind. So stay tuned and keep commenting!

Cheers,
Michael

Posted by Michael Koenig in features

We’re really excited about our latest beta release that we rolled out last night. The main attraction is Reply By Email – blog owners can now reply to comments made on their blogs, approve or deny friendship requests, and moderate comments all via email. If you’re interested in getting in on this beta, please drop me a line at support@intensedebate.com.

In addition, email and IP addresses will now be included in your new comment posting email notifications for our beta testers. We’ve had numerous requests from our users to be able to privately chat with each other. This is the first step! This new functionality is just a stepping stone of some awesome features to come, so stay tuned and get in on this beta!

Kudos to Jon and Isaac on a job well done!

Posted by Michael Koenig in features

We’re making great strides here at Intense Debate in indexing comments! We’ve teamed up with Lijit to help bring light to what we call “the Dark Matter of the Blogosphere,” by which we mean most blog comments, which are usually not indexed by big search engines. For the first time blog readers and commenters have the ability to search through the vast number of comments made on blogs with Intense Debate.

What does this mean exactly? Glad you asked! In the past, comments have been unsearchable. You’ve invested your time and written informative essays in response to blog posts only to have them lost into the comment abyss. Finding comments was like searching for buried treasure – unless you had some sort of map where X marks the spot you couldn’t find them. Even if you had a map there was no guarantee. Well now with the first phase of our Lijit integration you can search for comments a bit easier. Consider it a far more reliable treasure map, or an awesome metal detector.

Lijit provides bloggers with an enhanced ability to let their readers search for and discover content on the Internet. If you haven’t given Lijit a try you’re missing out. Now, Intense Debate and Lijit have teamed up to put the wisdom of your comments on the map.

Stay tuned for further innovations…

Posted by Michael Koenig in features