I installed the new Disqus Wordpress plugin this week.  I had held off before because it didn’t support trackbacks but the new features made it seem worth a try.  I was really impressed because it did NOT go smoothly.

The process is: 1) Install and activatate the plugin. 2) Tell Discus to import your existing comments from the Wordpress database.  I can tell you from experience that #2  doesn’t scale well.  Database import/expoorts, no matter how simple, basically need to be overseen by a human because some percentage of the time the import/export is going to be misaligned.  Whomever the product people are at Discus had 2 options - they could make ME the lowly blogger manage and debug the process or they could have someone there do it.  Making me do it scales better (in theory they need fewer employees per new user).  It also guarantees that some of their customers are going to have bad user experiences.

Per my post on the new brand math, it’s crucial in the Internet age that you manage every single customer interaction.  Asking users to debug database import/exports would be a big mistake.

So there WAS a problem with my import/export.  I found out because AndrewB at Disqus sent me an email.  I emailed him back telling him I was pulling the plugin down, and to let me know when I should try it again.  He emailed me back this morning and told me “We fixed the glitch”.  I turned Discus back on, and found all my comments imported successfully.

If Disqus had relied on me to debug the import/export, I likely would have pulled the product down and grumbled a little.  Instead, they managed the interaction and got a customer and a glowing blog post.  That is how you scale a business.