I’ve moved my comments to Disqus. This is a great service, incredibly easy to integrate (cut and paste two html/javascript snippets), with a simple and attractive UI. It also doesn’t hurt that its founders Jason and Daniel play a mean hand of poker, and that Jason helped me import my historical comments from an XML file.
Outsourcing my comments, you say? Why bother? Blog comments are the sort of thing you would hardly think to outsource: they’re not complicated, and most blogging software comes with comment management built in.
But they are hard to do right. Threading, avatars, markdown formatting, and the dreaded spam problem that inevitably comes to any popular blog: why not push this off to people who will worry about it full time on your behalf?
Common business wisdom says to outsource everything you can. The idea is to find the thing that is what your business does best (“core competency,” if you’re into that sort of thing) and put as close to 100% of your resources behind that as possible. The rest you should make into someone else’s problem.
In the age of web services, mashups, and open APIs, this is easier than ever. I think of it as punting. Avoid getting tangled in problems that aren’t the one you’re trying to solve by punting it to someone else. I’m punting on comments.