Rev2.org

Disqus, the webwide comments system I’m proud to say we were one of the first to cover last year, has undoubtedly come afar. They’ve been widely accepted amongst the blogosphere as the comments system which is a must add on, and about 30,000 websites have integrated it (including us).

Today, they’re launching Disqus 2.0, the successor to their previous version. The new version includes, in a nutshell, a revamped website, a much-improved WordPress plugin, and the idea of comment-blogs — that is, having comments from every Disqus commenter/member posted across the Disqus universe stored in a blog format.

Revamped Disqus.com
The first and most obvious thing about version 2 is their reorganized, restructured, and redesigned website. I’m not sure why, but I’ve always found their interface to be border-line clunky, and I’m glad to say that none of those words apply to this version. They’ve obviously re-considered most parts of it, simplified it by a thousand times (putting focus on its more important elements and hiding the rest), and if you were one to use the interface to moderate comments on your site or your comments posted elsewhere, you’re going to find it a much better experience.

Something I love about the new dashboard is that the whole concept of Disqus is integrated into it as opposed to a section for your own comments and a section for setting up your website (two distinctly different purposes). There’s “My Comments”, which shows your comments across Disqus, and there’s “My Websites”, which, if you have multiple websites integrated into it like I do, you’re going to find helpful. The moderation side of Disqus is nicely tucked away in the Admin section, where you can also edit settings, setup integration, etc.

Improved WordPress Plugin
I would estimate a high majority of Disqus users integrate it to their sites with WordPress, and they’ve obviously taken the step to put a focus on this audience for the release. The new plugin includes SEO friendly comments, automatic comments syncing between the WordPress database and Disqus (yay!), a seamless import/export of new comments, and a way to moderate your comments from right within WordPress. As a WordPress user, you’ve no idea how much I appreciate this. It’s always been a task to remind myself to check Disqus once in a while, and now I can do it within WordPress.

Discussion-blogs? Discuslogs?
Something I love, as a general Disqus commenter around the Internet is their new profiles function and the slightly Twitter-like aspect to it. As a comment, you automatically have a public profile (here’s mine), which shows your latest comments and your Twitter status. You can add friends and people can fan you, and all their comments are visible in the “Friends” tab, much like Twitter, but a way to ensure only the discussion-worthy, thoughtful stuff comes through.

Conclusion
Overall, I love it. Disqus is a great example of how you can start in one place and end up in another. Just yesterday, I remember Disqus CEO Daniel Ha explaining the half-baked idea to me over Google Talk, back when each Disqus-integrated blog used to be “forum” and each post a “topic.” The use has obviously gone in a different direction they intended, and they’ve evolved the product likewise. I’ll be honest I wasn’t really sure if it was just going to end up as “another one of those” WordPress plugins, but today, I see a complete product and vision. Keep it up, Disqusians!

Delicious today finally unveiled their long awaited “2.0″ rehaul — the one they’ve been talking about for a year — at delicious.com. The new version features a faster interface, better search, and an overall new design, which should make Delicious users pretty giddy, although I’m not sure that’s the case seeing how long they had to wait for it.

Among other things, the new design keeps Delicious’ traditional simple and barebones look, although it does implement new elements such as dropdowns and tabs. Like the old one, it still seems a breeze to use, though I’m sure it’s going to take some getting used to. Some of the new features include new ways to sort through bookmarks and generally more “social” feel. Searching also works much better now.

The design seems to be a natural, expected “easier, better, faster” rehaul. While there aren’t any major features introduced, it does make the site better, though I think it might be a year too late. Delicious essentially knows what people like on the web, and I’d love to see them do more Digg-like things, such as recommendations, the ability to “blast” stories to one and other (in a easier way than tagging the other user), etc.

I used to be an avid Delicious user sometime last year. Bookmarking everything cool, using it to collect links, browsing it daily for cool things, the ideal ‘hardcore user.’ For some reason, my interests faded away and my use into services like Digg, Twitter, FriendFeed, and Google Reader. Or maybe it wasn’t me — it seemed like Delicious has been the same since the day it launched, and especially since Yahoo!’s acquisition. Founder Joshua Shachter left the company a few months ago, and much of the excitement seems to be gone from the service. Will the new design be able to revive it?

A search engine which has been making waves in the blogosphere for the last day or two is Cuil (pronounced “cool”). You’ve probably used it twice already, and its random search results (in some cases, the worst ever served by a search engine) do less to serve and more to amaze. I made up my mind this morning to not write about Cuil since I think it had been written about a little too much, but now it hardly seems like it matters.

For you slowpokes, the back story of Cuil is that it was started by a couple ex-Googlers who played a crucial part in what Google search is today, they raised $30 million for the startup and brought on board more Googlers, who have then built a search engine with an index of 125 billion pages (supposedly more than Google’s) and close to 1% relevancy, though no one is judging since it is, literally, their first day on the job.

I think what’s more interesting than the search engine itself, which is like any other “kill Google” new-search-engine-on-the-block, is the question of whether we need another Google, and if it is theoritically possible for someone to create a search engine which has results 25% – 50% better than Google’s and get 1 billion people to switch to it.

Robert Scoble doesn’t think so. He argues, “I still doubt many people would switch. Why? Distribution. Huh? Well, my Firefox browser has Google built into it. Most people have no idea how to switch it. Most people, on our tests, really don’t understand much of anything except that that little box probably now goes to Google. The Google. It’s so pervasive of an expectation at this point that many people type URLs into that box. Or, type the word “Yahoo” into that box so they can get to their email and other Yahoo services. Is Cuil going to be able to get into this game? No way, no how.”

I think Scoble is right on the dot, as close-minded as it sounds. Cuil’s problem isn’t relevancy, even given that it has cracked it. Cuil’s problem is distribution. Mass, billion user-level distribution. We like to think that the market place will at all costs reward anything which is better than something else, but I simply don’t think this will be the case should a real Google-killer arrive (and Cuil isn’t it). Instead, here is how I think it will more likely happen:

• Google killer arrives.
• Early adopters try it out, like it, have luck with it. Love it.
• Google killer gets bought by Microsoft and is never to be heard of again, found later as a part of Live.

And that’s the sad and depressing fact of being a 21st century Google-killer. See, when Google took over AltaVista, the situation was very different. Unlike Google, AltaVista sucked. They had cracked probably a 25% relevancy rate, which is close to being the only market option at the time. Google did 50%, eventually people noticed it, and AltaVista is not to be heard of today.

Which brings me to Cuil (or any Google killer’s) problem: Google today is probably about 90% relevant. This means it satisfies probably 90% of people’s searches on the Internet, that is of course, given the appropriate and relevant pages exist. This means, though you may have better search results than Google, Google is going to work 90% of the time regardless of its second-grade search results, and as a result, 90% of the people on this planet have no reason to care about you.

So let’s say a search engine cracks 100%. The result: as long as Google’s relevancy doesn’t degrade over time, or they are overwhelmed somehow by spam overnight, Google ain’t moving. 70%+ search dominance, we’re still alive! This is because of one simple reason: distribution. Google has manage to crack distribution, branding, presence, while being “just good enough,” and this is all the world asks from a search engine — no 100% relevancy, nothing else.

But that is not to say that all hope is lost for aspiring Google killers. I think if you can crack, firstly, 90%+ relevancy, and secondly, a user interface which is as close to what Google’s own was at its time, which says a lot seeing that it’s remained the same for 10 years, and if you can resist the temptation of a $100 million – $400 million buyout from Steve Ballmer, you may have something in your hands. And then, it would be a long wait — maybe years — till you can get even a fraction of the distribution and scaling that Google has, but after that, you will have a Google killer in your hands.

The chances of that happening of course is very unlikely. What is more likely is a growing pool of aspiring Google killers in the market, and, as a result, a growing pool of possible acquisitions for Microsoft to choose from. My prediction: Microsoft gobbles gobbles gobbles through this growing pool, and eventually Live Search is as good as Google’s, but distribution is yet to be cracked. In other words: Google remains king.

I love nifty voicemail services which make use of the Internet in some day. This one doesn’t really make use of the Internet so much other than for marketing purposes, but it’s still very cool. The name of the service is Slydial and it lets you get directly to someone’s mobile voicemail, skipping the call they might or might not pick up. In short: a direct way to leave a message while saving time and avoiding an awkward phone call.

Here’s how it works: you dial 267-SLYDIAL from any U.S. landline or cell phone, and enter the phone number of the person you want to leave the voicemail to. You’re directed to their voicemail within a second, and you can go ahead and leave the message, which they get to whenever they want to.

The service is undoubtedly a niche, situation-oriented service, but I see a lot of people having a use for it. We often need to save some time in our fast-paced lives, and thinking of the thousands of businessmen this is targeted for, it could serve as the perfect solution.

Update 2: 8PM PDT — the service seems to be back up. Wow. What a downtime.

Update: 11:23 AM PDT – still down. “Testing is still in progress. We’re working very hard to restore service to our customers.”

As of 11:05PDT, Amazon’s S3 service seems to be undergoing an outage — everything hosted on the cloud is down. This means sites like Twitter and Smugmug are affected. Amazon’s latest comment outlines that the problem “is an issue with the communication between several Amazon S3 internal components.” CenterNetworks broke the outage this morning.

You can track the status here. They currently don’t seem to have an ETA, but mention that they are in the process of testing a potential solution.

This is Amazon’s second outage in the last six months or so. Given the trust that is put in by web services and content creators into S3 and the general idea of “cloud computing”, this seems to a reminder that it’s not an end-all solution and backup options might still be needed to be put in place.

Meebo announced the launch of CommunityIM today, what they’re calling an “open instant messaging for online communities.” The platform is intended for online communities — be it a blog or gaming groups, any website with a community aspect — and enables them to have live and real-time conversations which seem like a much more intimate alternative to Meebo’s regular instant messaging solution.

With the Community IM platform, websites and online communities can apply to partner and integrate Meebo to their websites. Some of their launch partners include Flixter, PopSugar, AddictedGames, Tagged, and DanceJam. The integration works much like Facebook’s chat feature — a bar listing the user’s online status and some general details is visible, clicking on which reveals the user’s contacts and allows them to prompt IM conversations.

While I myself am not a big user, Facebook’s Chat feature has done a great job of adding a real-time aspect to the site, letting its users communicate with each other in a more timely manner. I think the addition of Meebo CommunityIM to community-driven sites will prove to do the same.