<http://schema.org/articleBody>
"One trend we\u2019ve seen this year is the rise of third-party comment systems, with much blog discussion moving beyond the original post.  The space just got a whole lot more interesting today, as Automattic \u2013 the maker of WordPress \u2013 has acquired IntenseDebate, one of the leading providers of such commenting systems.  \nThe deal \u2013 announced today on IntenseDebate\u2019s blog \u2013 could give the combined company a leg up on competitors, which include startups like Disqus, SezWho, and JS-Kit.  Why?  Because between the installable version of WordPress and the hosted one on WordPress.com, the company is the #1 or #2 blogging platform on the Web.  \nWhile competitors currently talk about numbers in the tens or hundreds of thousands in terms of installations, WordPress has millions of blogs on which it can push the IntenseDebate system.  Matt Mullenweg, the founder of WordPress, writes as much in a blog post of his own:\n\u201CThere is a huge opportunity to increase the traffic and engagement of blogs significantly. WordPress.com alone already gets about three legitimate comments every second \u2014 more than a quarter of a million every day. I\u2019m excited to see what the Intense Debate team can do to make things more interesting.\u201D\nThus, once WordPress.com migrates its comment system over to IntenseDebate, all of a sudden Automattic will have the number one commenting system in its hands.  In doing so, the service will not only be more attractive to users of Automattic\u2019s blogging software, but users of other platforms as well, since IntenseDebate will presumably boast the largest commenter community, and hence, improve the blogger\u2019s ability to ramp up engagement.  \nWhile IntenseDebate probably wasn\u2019t perceived by most as the leader in Web comments before today, this deal makes a ton of sense for Automattic, and is probably causing a few headaches right now in the offices of a number of startups.  I asked Daniel Ha, CEO of Disqus, about the news and he responded with the following:\n\"The deal is a big leap for IntenseDebate and a good grab for the Automattic family. We're moving in the direction where the discussion is no longer a second-class citizen to the published article \u2014 this shows that Automattic is paying attention to what was lacking in the comments. I think Disqus (and others in the space) will continue to work harder on offerings for users of WordPress and the many other platforms.\"\nThey'll have some time to work on those offerings too - IntenseDebate is headed back into private beta as they work on integrating with Automattic."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://mashable.com/2008/09/23/automattic-acquires-intensedebate/>