I just switched the commenting system from Disqus to Intense Debate. Everything went smoothly, no comments were lost that I can tell. We did lose threading on existing comments, but that’s not a big deal to me – I go back and forth on whether or not I like threading anyway. New comments can be threaded, no problem.

Why switch, you may ask? That’s a good question, and one a Disqus representative asked me on Twitter when I tweeted that I was thinking about switching. Incidentally, any companies out there? Set up a Twitter account and have searches set up so you can respond to people talking about/complaining about/praising your company. It’s really cool to have someone from Disqus or UPS or Comcast reply to your random tweets and answer your questions right there. But I digress.

I wasn’t unhappy with Disqus, but as an early adopter, I wanted to test out the competition. Plus, Intense Debate is owned by Automattic now (WordPress’s parent company), and I wanted to check out the integration. Plus, and perhaps most importantly, Intense Debate offers the ability to subscribe to comments via email, whether or not you’ve commented on the thread. Disqus says they’re working on that, but don’t have it yet, and while I honestly prefer to subscribe to comments via RSS, I’ve been talking to people, and subscribing via email is a coveted feature.

So there you go. Sorry to anyone who signed up with Disqus and is now exasperated about having something else to sign up for. I’ll reassure you in two ways. One, you don’t have to sign up with Intense Debate to leave a comment. Two, Intense Debate has probably THE EASIEST signup I’ve ever seen in my life. The first time I commented on an Intense Debate-enabled site, I was seriously impressed at how painless they made it, and I was like, hmmmm…these guys are onto something, maybe I should try them out. So there you go. Let me know if you all hate it.