Disqus CEO not worried about Facebook comment threat

Despite the clear competition from Facebook’s new commenting service, commenting company Disqus’s co-founder and CEO Daniel Ha says he is not concerned about Facebook’s foray into the field, according to PeHub.

On March 1st Facebook introduced its commenting plug-in. TechCrunch, GigaOm, the Daily Beast, and other notable websites replaced the popular Disqus commenting service with this plug-in to test out the new service.

Ha told PeHub, “We think of Facebook as a competent competitor. They’ve put a stake in the ground – they see a lot of value in what we do. But we haven’t seen [Facebook] make a dent in our traction, which is why we aren’t shaking in our boots.”

Facebook’s commenting plug-in does not allow users to comment anonymously because every comment is connected to a Facebook profile. If a user is already logged into a Facebook account, they won’t need to go through any authentication options, and all comments written are also posted to a user’s Facebook wall, except when this is asked not to occur.

In 2010, Disqus grew its traffic from users and the number of publishers using its platform between 500 to 600 percent, Ha said. Disqus is also the commenting platform for more than 700,000 websites, including CNN,  Fox News and this very site. Ironically, since Facebook’s comment launch, Ha says that he has seen 30 to 40 percent growth in daily installs.

Disqus is a four-year-old, 20-person startup, that is headquartered in San Francisco. The company has raised $4.5 million from investors including Y Combinator and Union Square Ventures.