LiveFyre vs Disqus - Social Infrastructure at its best

Two of the best developments in Social have not been above ground. They have been underground. They have been two networks that truly are social. And they make communicating easy. They have taken Blogs to a new level and I am so happy they have arrived. Though have no idea how to integrate them on this blog! But I never claimed to be a techie! I just use tech!

http://livefyre.com/

http://disqus.com/

In the past for each blog you needed to sign in specifically to comment. The blogger might respond back and that is it. It was very hard to have real conversations about a topic. And rarely did other visitors to the blog have comments for the commentary. 

Now this all has changed. Both services send you notifications when someone responds to your comment. And instead of having to log in with Facebook, which I never do now, nor will ever do anywhere but onto Facebook itself, they give you one log in that is good across multiple websites and tied to your email address. They also allow people to 'Like' your comment which I am sure will increase your stature as a good source of information the more 'Likes' you have.

The two main differences I have seen (and I could be wrong since I use only the default settings), is Disqus alerts you only when your comment is responded too. LiveFyre alerts you via email every time there is a new post on that blog entry. It does this automatically once you comment. I need to  check deeper into the settings. And one glaring difference which sets them apart is Disqus allows you to go back and edit your comment, even after posting. LiveFyre does not. This is huge for someone like me who types slower than my brain thinks and often posts with spelling errors. I have not seen a Spell Check Feature on either which is sorely lacking.

I am not sure who the VC backers of Livefyre are, but Disqus is backed by Union Square Ventures which has in their stable, Twitter, Tumblr, Zynga and Boxee among other great Social Start Ups. And @FredWilson who is one of the partners has an amazing blog that is a must read for Entrepreneurs www.avc.com

Long term I see networks like this being integrated across all platforms and websites and I predict they will outlast even Facebook and Twitter for their usefulness!