Automattic buys IntenseDebate

Automattic, the company responsible for WordPress, has announced it's purchase of IntenseDebate, a cross-platform commenting system designed to increase the possibilities of community involvement in sites.

This is why Microsoft is losing relevance

Toni Schneider, Automattic Chief Executive explains that the decision came down to starting their own system or buying one of the start-ups [1]. That's a nice decision to be able to make but I'm yet to see a lot of comments on why Automattic went with ID or why they decided not to build their own in the first place. So far the most likely answer is that both WordPress and ID are based on the same technologies, PHP and MySQL [1].

Herein lies an interesting question. How many of these acquirable start-ups have used Microsoft technologies to create their services? It seems that the open source technologies such as PHP, Ruby on Rails and Java have all had a dramatic effect on the topology of the web yet microsoft's systems seem to be conspicuously absent? Why is their .net platform not mentioned more often alongside the great victories of Web 2.0?

The answer is, of course, that Open Source technologies are the preferred choice for people with ideas while proprietary software is the choice for people with legal departments. Because of heavy-handed EULAs and prohibitive software costs, not to mention a lack of performance, Microsoft technologies lack the agility to grow a good idea.

The Web 2.0 community

I can't help but get the feeling that Automattic must be feeling awfully 'grown-up' about using similar language to giants like Google and Microsoft, even if this isn't their first acquisition along these lines [2].

Unfortunately for competitors such as Disqus, Id has decided to remain platform agnostic [3][4]. This means that ID will be able to leverage the increased scale of native integration with WordPress blogs but will still be developing to stay relevant on other platforms such as Blogger and MoveableType.

IntenseDebate (ID) is a plug-in that allows sites such as Blogs and News pages to increase the functionality of their own in-built commenting system. Some of the major benefits of using systems like ID and Disqus is that users can maintain a profile over many different sites that they use, allowing for reputations to grow and for the better tracking of online discussions.

[1]Automattic buys blog comment plugin Intense Debate
[2]Automattic acquires Gravatar
[3]Automattic Acquires ID
[4]ID goes Automattic