We’re extremely pleased to announce that IntenseDebate will now be joining the Automattic team! This is a big day for us and we couldn’t be more stoked about what it means for the future of IntenseDebate.

So what does this mean for you, our valued users? A couple of things:
1.) We will be temporarily going back into an invite only system. This won’t affect our current users, but new installs will require an invite code. This is just to give us a little time to ramp up the hardware and get our ducks in a row as we join the Automattic team.

2.) You’ll be seeing IntenseDebate a lot more often. We’re really excited about the distribution possibilities this opens up, so expect to see our comment system and use your IntenseDebate profile on a lot more blogs.

3.) You can look forward to tighter integration with some of the other Automattic joints including Akismet and Gravatar.

But don’t worry!
You will still be able to use IntenseDebate on Typepad, Tumblr, Blogger, Movable Type, and other platforms with more to come! We will continue to improve our comment system and your commenters’ experience. IntenseDebate will continue to enhance and encourage conversation on your blog and build your reader community.

It’s business as usual except we will be ramping up in size and features, and integrating more closely with other Automattic properties to provide an even better commenting experience. The IntenseDebate name and logo isn’t going anywhere – it’s just going to get way more Intense! It’s been a long road to get here, but we’re just getting started…

The fellas decided it was a good idea to send me to Las Vegas to represent IntenseDebate at this year’s BlogWorld Expo! Can you believe it? Man do I have them fooled. Gotta love a job that sends you to Vegas.

Make sure you stop by our booth and say what’s up! I’ll have some t-shirt’s and we’ll be having the real “What Would You Do For An IntenseDebate T-Shirt” Contest. It’s Vegas so who knows what’s going to happen. There’s a good chance that it could get weird.

So come on by the Las Vegas Convention Center this Saturday, Saturday, Saturday, and Sunday, Sunday, Sunday and let’s get funky in Vegas. If I’m not at the booth it’s because Vegas got the best of me. Please let the rest of the team know so they can send out a search and rescue party.

Just kidding.

But not really.

At IntenseDebate we’re all about shaking hands, kissing babies, and contributing to the community. I may be stating the obvious here, but IntenseDebate cares (period). With that in mind we are extremely pleased to pledge one percent of our overall equity to the Entrepreneurs Foundation of Colorado.

EFCO (as it’s known in the halls of many a Colorado high school) is a philanthropic program with the mission of assisting entrepreneurs and start-ups in giving back to the community. I can’t explain it better than how the good folks at EFCO describe their mission:

Along with our fellow EFCO members, we are delighted to have the opportunity to contribute and become involved at this stage in our company.

Yeah that’s right, we’re IntenseDebate and we bring change you can believe in.

You can’t rush perfection. Like wine, code needs to mature to ensure excellence. This has been on the down-low for months. We’ve been taking our time to massage out all of the knots, dot all i’s and cross all the t’s. If you’ve listened closely you might have heard quiet whispers about our new IntenseDebate WordPress plugin. Over the past couple of months I have been recruiting testers for our private alpha testing. When I first told our good buddy, Chris Farley about our new plugin for his blog ViewfromaFarley, his response was:

And with good reason… The new IntenseDebate WordPress plugin is one of a kind, featuring advanced integrations that you won’t find and can’t get anywhere else. I can’t spill the beans on our full feature list yet, but one of the key ingredients is complete data sync like nothing you’ve seen before. That’s all I can say right now, but let your imagination run wild with this - if you can dream it, well, we’ve most likely done it.

Private beta starts Sunday, August 24th with the public release following shortly thereafter. If you would like to get in on the beta, drop me line at support@intensedebate.com. If we’ve already chatted about it there’s no need to email, I’ve got you covered. For all of my alpha testers out there who have yet to receive the plugin, there’s no need to email - I know who you are and you’ll be hearing from me soon.

Peace, I’m outta here!

Last night’s release marks the start of the IntenseDebate revolution. We’ve had our heads down over the past few months working on several projects that are now all coming to fruition. We’re unleashing an unrelenting stream of new game changing features, improvements and developments. Hold on to your hats, it’s about to get crazy.

New Sleek Feel
If you’re a regular visitor of IntenseDebate.com then you’ve probably noticed our new sleek design and layout. Our Swedish designer, Isaac Keyet, has been working tirelessly on our website redesign (install, registration process and all) for around three months now, so you can imagine our excitement to have it up and running! Congrats Isaac on a job well done!

Advanced Spam Ass-Kicking
In addition, we’ve also released our Akismet spam filter integration. It’s a preemptive but necessary measure against one of the evil forces lurking about on the net. Plus we had to do something to put a final end to the days of that pesky jewelry spammer some of you may have encountered.

New WordPress Plugin Beta Testing
And now the pièce de résistance - later today we will announce upcoming beta testing dates and a full feature list for our new WordPress plugin! People will bow to it.

Stay tuned for details…

UPDATE:
Sorry all, I spoke too soon. I will not be divulging a full feature set today, just some. Gotta leave some gravy for the big launch day!

We’re constantly searching the globe for talented developers to join our crew here at IntenseDebate. Drum roll please…

Please meet the newest rockstar to join our crew here at IntenseDebate, Mehmet Alkanlar. New to Boulder, Colorado, Mehmet joins us from Izmir, Turkey and has some heavy PHP/MySQL experience under his belt.

Mehmet holds a B.S. in Computer Science from Montana State University. But there’s more to Mehmet than meets the eye. He’s a skydiver, windsurfer, and classical guitarist - that’s a pretty well rounded developer right there.

He’s been here a little over a week and his abilities are already blowing our minds. Currently he’s tackling some back-end projects but you can expect to see him flex his dev muscles with some shiny new features soon enough. Please drop Mehmet a line in the comment section below, and be sure to check out his profile to learn more about him. Oh and swing by his twitter profile - he’s brand new and trying to get the hang of it!

Stoked to have you on the team Mehmet!

All right, here’s the skinny. We’re getting ready to release our new Google Reader and Bloglines plugins for Firefox 2 & 3 and we’re looking for beta testers.

This isn’t your normal run of the mill RSS reader integration. Our Google Reader and Bloglines plugins allow you to not only access IntenseDebate comments, but also respond to them directly from your reader! Amazing right?!?! I’ve got to tell you, I’ve been playing around with our Google Reader plugin on Firefox 3 for the past week and it is so choice.

If you’re interested in testing out our betas please drop me a line at support@intensedebate.com and we’ll get you all set up.

Start getting excited!
Michael & the fellas at IntenseDebate

So Klondike is having this What Would You Do For a Klondike Bar? video contest where the winner gets $100K. Let’s face it, there’s no way you’re going to win that contest. But IntenseDebate is giving you the opportunity to still be a winner!

Introducing IntenseDebate’s What Would You Do For an IntenseDebate T-Shirt Comment Contest where the winner gets $100 NO!, $50 NO!, $25 NO!… to feed their ego and an IntenseDebate t-shirt.

The rules are simple: leave us a comment detailing what you would do for an IntenseDebate t-shirt and if it’s t-shirt worthy then it shall be yours! Seeing as this is the first batch of t’s, we’ve got a limited supply.

You don’t even want to know what these folks had to do to get a shirt…

We’re pleased to answer your calls and release two new admin features this week. Big ups to our dev team for keeping the good stuff coming and for keepin’ it real.

Close Comments On Posts
Let’s face it sometimes debates just get too intense. Honestly, it’s a health risk – blood pressures start rising, heart rates elevate…look we don’t need anyone keeling over from a heart attack. We don’t want to have to put a disclaimer on IntenseDebate that you should have Bayer Aspirin on hand when using our product. We’re concerned about your health. IntenseDebate cares.

So we thought it would be a good idea to take some preventative measures and give blog publishers the ability to close comments on posts. This feature can be accessed in your IntenseDebate comments on your blog post under the “Admin Options” tab.

Commenter Account Stipulations
In staying with the theme of keepin’ it real, blog publishers can now set commenter account stipulations. That’s just fancy talk for saying that you can opt to require all of your commenters to create IntenseDebate accounts in order to comment on your posts. Now you can choose whether or not you want to allow anonymous comments on your posts. If you’ve had issues with spammers or repeat anonymous comment offenders, you can require them to create an account and keep the debate real. This feature is available in your blog settings page at IntenseDebate.com (login, select the tab named after your blog, followed by the “Settings†sub-tab).

As always, we’d love your feedback.

Word out,
The Fellas at IntenseDebate

You may have noticed some changes that were rolled out in last night’s release. Three cheers to the team for getting all this out!

HTML Parsing
We’re proud to answer the call and release HTML support in IntenseDebate comments. If you’ve got the urge to add a little self-expression, feel free to add some bold or italic characters. You can also customize your links and add some photos to your comments. You can allow your readers to add images to their comments by enabling this option in your Blog Settings page (login into IntenseDebate.com, select the tab named after your blog followed by the “Settings” sub-tab). The option is located on the right side of the page under the heading “Display Settings.” Image tags are disabled by default. IntenseDebate supports the following HTML tags - <a>, <b>, <i>, <u>, <em>, <p>, <blockquote>, <br>, <strong>, <strike>, <img>.

Popular Blog Posts Widget
We released a new widget that displays the most popular blog posts on your blog (as determined by the number of comments made per post). By displaying this widget on your home page, you’ll be able to breath new life into your past blog posts and drive some fresh traffic their way. This widget is the next step in bringing your content into the light (check out our past progress here & here). This widget can be found on our Add-on’s page along with our other kick-ass widgets (Blog Stats, Recent Comments, My Recent Comments, and Top Commenters).

New Usernames & Profile URL’s
After much deliberation, we’ve decided to take the plunge and update our approach to usernames and profile URL’s. Before we get any further into this, this does not have anything to do with your Display Name - your Display Name has not changed.

Basically we’ve changed your username from an account ID number to a friendlier name. Integrating your IntenseDebate account with other 3rd party services like FriendFeed will be a bit easier now. For those of you that have enabled IntenseDebate’s FriendFeed Comment Retrieval you might recall having to enter your IntenseDebate profile URL that consisted of an ugly user account ID number. Your profile URL is a little prettier and looks a little something like this: http://intensedebate.com/people/michael.

If you are using our IntenseDebate FriendFeed Comment Retrieval, you do not need to update your IntenseDebate profile URL in your FriendFeed account. You’re all set.

Here’s the skinny on the new usernames. Your username has automatically been updated. Please note that any incompatible characters were removed from your username. In addition, numbers from your IntenseDebate account ID may have been added to your username in the event that there were duplicate usernames. Again, this will not affect your IntenseDebate Display Name.

We wanted to let you know about this in case you want to set your username and profile URL to something that fits your style so you can remember it more easily. To update your username please edit your IntenseDebate user profile. We apologize for the inconvenience, but it will be worth it in the long run!

As always, please feel free to drop us a line with any questions or feedback.

Sincerely,
The fellas at IntenseDebate