With Automattic rolling out the like button across all WordPress.com blogs, many bloggers have been searching for a similar solution without having to embrace Facebook.
Fortunately it looks like Disqus has now officially rolled out their like feature to the masses which also fully supports Gravatars (a service by Automattic).
About a month ago, we (pre) announced a feature called Community Likes. Since then, there’s been a couple hundred early adopting communities testing this feature out (thank you!) and a few hundred thousand likes given. Today, this feature is going live on all sites using Disqus. […]
Liking comments has been a core piece of Disqus since the beginning, and we’re now extending this feedback mechanism to the top-level page or article itself. Community Likes is an easy, quick way for your visitors to give feedback and make their presence known on your site, all without having to post an actual comment. (Official Disqus Blog)
Disqus’s like feature is also integrated with Twitter and Facebook so users who click on the thumbs symbol will be able to share their interests to their tweet stream and Facebook friends.
Disqus currently supports numerous blog platforms including Blogger, Typepad and WordPress (self hosted only).
It will be interesting to see if Disqus’s like button will convince more bloggers to outsource their comment sections instead of maintaining the de facto comment appearance that is standard upon many blogs.
Ironically Disqus’s main rival Intense Debate (which is owned by Automattic) does not support Gravatar likes for their users, although WordPress will probably add this feature to Intense Debate in the future.
