Recently, there's been quite an up stir on commenting systems. And rightfully so, as comments are very important to bloggers. Since we're in the times of "following" others online in any social network available, it only seemed inevitable that social commenting systems would come. Welcome Disqus and IntenseDebate.

What they provide:

• Comment Threading
• Comment Tracking
• Comment Ranking/Rating
• Posting to Twitter
• Commenter User Profile
• e-mail Replies
• Comment Spam blocking
• FriendFeed integration

These services provide a nice and easy way for you to manage your commenting on other blogs. So you can just log into the system and comment without having to fill out the normally required form fields.

Supported platforms include:

• WordPress
• Blogger
• Tumblr
• Movable Type
• TypePad
• Drupal
• b2evolution
• Graffiti
• Joomla
• RubyGem

Does this sound too good to be true?

As with all things, there's always some negatives. In these cases, in order for you to use your Commenter Profile, the blog you're posting on has to have the system installed on it. And with that comes a price. And that price is Styling. Or to be more specific, lack of full CSS customizability. Disqus does offer some custom CSS, but no where near as customizable as your traditional blog comments. You're pretty much stuck with the style that they come with. For better or worse. Chris Coyier of CSS Tricks touches on this in his 1 week review of IntenseDebate. Another problem is that there isn't a standard choice for the platform. While this isn't really a problem. It means, as a commenter you may need to have an account on both commenting systems. If you so choose of course.

It is also important to note that commenters may still leave comments without having an IntenseDebate or Disqus account. It's merely another option for them.

Enter the Dark Horse

While not a direct competitor to Disqus and IntenseDebate, BackType is another system that has recently picked up some steam. There was a rather length debate on FriendFeed as to where BackType fits in. The main reason as to why BackType doesn't fit into direct competition is because it does not require you to install anything into your blog. Instead, it searches and aggregates all your comments into one place for you to share and view. It does this by searching the "Website" optional field when you submit a comment to another website. BackType also allows you to have a Commenter profile and "follow" other commenters. It does not have a login capability so that you don't have to fill out the required and optional fields. And you must fill out the "website" field accordingly in order for it to attribute the comment to your profile. Louis Gray has quite a few write-ups on BackType on his Disqus-powered blog.

Okay. This is great and all, but which one do I choose?

Well, the answer to that is of course. It depends. If you use FriendFeed, all 3 of these are supported and can be imported into your feed. If you're searching for a system for your WordPress blog, I would probably choose IntenseDebate as it was recently purchased by WordPress's parent company, Automattic. Disqus does currently offer more platforms support. In case your platform is not supported by IntenseDebate. I'm looking at you Drupal and Joomla. Disqus also seems to be a more widely-chosen system. In case that matters to you.

Also, if you're looking for reasons to use Disqus, Venture Capitalist, Fred Wilson offers you his 3 reasons. While Robert Scoble points you towards some Disqus enabled blogs and on the Disqus-only feature of Seesmic video comments. Keep in mind that version 2.7 of WordPress is just around the corner. And if you're only looking into these systems for threaded comments, the new version of WordPress will have that built-in.

As for my recommendation. I say, as a commenter having a profile in each can't hurt. But if you need to chose just one, I'd go with BackType. It supports both IntenseDebate and Disqus comments along with the blogs with neither of these.

What about you? What did you chose? What do you recommend? Are there other options out there?