James Curran blogs at The "What Do I Know Grit".  He has just installed the Intense Debate commenting system on his Blogspot blog.

People who visit my blog have been using Intense Debate for some time.  It continues to improve, with many improvements based on feedback from readers like you.

But besides the snazzy interface and the threaded commenting, Intense Debate offers another feature that will hopefully add some extraordinary value, now that there are two Canadian political blogs with the system installed.

Intense Debate encourages readers like you to create an account in order to leave comments.  I allow anonymous comments, but for people who create a user profile, there are some added benefits.  The one I want to focus on is the way Intense Debate can lead readers to explore other blogs they might not otherwise visit.

If you click on the name of the person who leaves a comment, you visit their profile, which includes a list of the most recent comments they've left via Intense Debate.

But here's the thing.  The list is for comments left on any blog using Intense Debate.

So let's say you leave a comment on my blog and, sometime later, on James' blog.  Someone else reads your comment and is impressed with your well thought opinion.  He clicks on your namke to visit your profile to see what other things you've said on my blog.  He'll see that you;ve been active James' blog as well.  He can follow the link from your Intense Debate user profile to James' blog.

Neat.

Of course, like the telephone, the true value of the scheme is apparent when there are two of them.

I like the idea, because it drives more linkage between blogs, without depending on the blog owner to make those links.  I can see the Intense Debate profiles of compulsive blog commenters (you know who you are) becoming hubs of their own, with other blog readers making a point of visiting the profiles of these prolific commenters and using them to guide their own travels through the blogosphere.

For now, for blogs covering Canadian politics, two of those stops are Angry in the Great White North and The "What Do I Know Grit".  I expect more will follow.

Maybe a Dipper can join in the party.

Addendum: Intense Debate is still officially in beta, and still growing and improving.  Remember that the commenting system is hosted on their servers, not mine, so I can't control, or even predict, when there might be slowdowns or connectivity problems.  By and large, these have disappeared, but occasionally people note sluggishness.  Just be patient and the problem invariably solves itself in a short time.

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