{"id":2243,"date":"2016-12-14T03:28:45","date_gmt":"2016-12-14T03:28:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rsoftsolution.com\/blog\/disqus-lays-off-11-as-it-plans-a-deeper-focus-on-data.html"},"modified":"2016-12-14T03:28:45","modified_gmt":"2016-12-14T03:28:45","slug":"disqus-lays-off-11-as-it-plans-a-deeper-focus-on-data","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rbsitsoftwaresolution.in\/blog\/disqus-lays-off-11-as-it-plans-a-deeper-focus-on-data.html","title":{"rendered":"Disqus lays off 11 as it plans a deeper focus on data"},"content":{"rendered":"


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Some downsizing and refocusing is underway at Disqus<\/a>, the startup incubated at Y-Combinator that became an early mover in\u00a0the business of offering a plug-in to help online\u00a0publishers\u00a0manage comments on stories. TechCrunch has learned and confirmed that the company has laid of 11 people, about 20 percent of its small staff, as it prepares to shift its business deeper into data services for publishers and advertisers.<\/p>\n

The cuts have been made in several departments, from sales through to engineering as part of the company \u201crebalancing\u201d its priorities in light of that shift.<\/p>\n

Disqus, co-founded in 2007 by\u00a0Daniel Ha<\/a>\u00a0(who is still its CEO)\u00a0and Jason Yan<\/a>\u00a0and with only $10.5 million raised in funding in all that time, is perhaps best known for its free commenting platform, which is in use across millions of websites and other communities today.<\/p>\n

But more recently Disqus\u00a0has been trying out other things to expand its business.\u00a0That has included a growing programmatic ad platform based around sponsored comments<\/a>, which debuted\u00a0in 2014 (it\u2019s this that makes the company money, as Disqus takes a share on ads that run through its otherwise free platform). And earlier this year, Disqus opted for another traffic gain as it relaunched\u00a0of its own site as a central repository not just of content and comments from sites that you follow and comment on with a Disqus ID; but also of standalone comment threads that existed\u00a0independent of these, Reddit-style<\/a>.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not clear how well those consumer efforts have gone, but from what I\u2019ve heard the plan is to halt them as Disqus\u00a0turns\u00a0to its\u00a0B2B focus. The new\u00a0effort will be built\u00a0out of the (anonymised) data that passes through Disqus\u2019 platform which sees\u00a0some 2 billion monthly unique users.<\/p>\n

Disqus plans to\u00a0reveal more details next year about these new data services, but\u00a0one likely area\u00a0it will focus on is marketing tech. Given how Disqus has used some of its data to help grow its own ad business, it could perhaps turn to offering data analytics to publishers and advertisers for more insight into what consumers\u00a0are reading\u00a0and discussing.<\/p>\n

While Disqus was a an early and leading player in the world of online comments,\u00a0times have changed. In addition to Facebook\u2019s aggressive move into the online comments\u00a0(it replaced<\/a> Disqus for us here at TC, not quietly<\/a>), there are\u00a0other competitors like Livefyre, which is now owned by Adobe<\/a> and shifting its own business<\/a>\u00a0priorities.<\/p>\n

Along with all\u00a0that,\u00a0the nature of how people interact with content online has changed\u00a0in recent years, with many now taking to social media to troll, fight trolls, and sometimes\u00a0engage in spirited debate, rather than do it on sites, underneath the articles that got them thinking or outraged in the first place.<\/p>\n

From what I understand, it\u2019s a small team at Disqus, only around 55 people, so cuts like these don\u2019t come lightly. Good luck\u00a0to them all.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Article source: http:\/\/feedproxy.google.com\/~r\/techcrunch\/social\/~3\/LgxsHQRzOuc\/<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Some downsizing and refocusing is underway at Disqus, the startup incubated at Y-Combinator that became an early mover in\u00a0the business of offering a plug-in to help online\u00a0publishers\u00a0manage comments on stories. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3],"tags":[10,7,14,15,6,12,11],"class_list":["post-2243","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-latest-update","tag-computer-news","tag-downloads","tag-microsoft-download-news","tag-networking-updates","tag-technology-update","tag-wordpress-plugin-download","tag-wordpress-theme-download"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t