And no, it's not Facebook, so don't worry your pretty little anonymous head. You will still be able to fire-hose the general populous from the cave of privacy afforded by your clever screen name. You will just be able to do it faster, and hopefully with fewer quirks.
The new system is called Livefyre. It's up and running now, although it may take a bit for previous comments to show up. I've put some things I know about it below, and will attempt to answer any questions you might have, as soon as I get back from picking up my kid at "preschool." (He's four months. His big thing is rolling onto his stomach and then whining about not being able to roll back. I think we can call it daycare.) Nick or Eric may also jump in.
Please be patient. We had to migrate every last pearl of wisdom uttered by you fine folks -- a job that took several days and sent several people to therapy. I expect some hiccups and you should too.
True Real Time: Our online guru tells us that "you can see who is listening to a conversation and read comments in real time, making it easier to jump right into the discussion."
You can also jump out at any time. Or can you?
SocialSync: "When conversation is happening about an article on Facebook or Twitter, you can now see that conversation within the commenting thread. You can also tag and import your friends from Twitter and Facebook within the comment stream yourself."
How many years will be until our bowel movements are automatically synced with Facebook and Twitter so our friends know when things are moving properly. Oh, and Instagram!
Notifications: "You can choose to be alerted via email when someone replies to or likes your comment."
Related: Please tell your boss to expect an additional 14 percent drop in productivity.
One Platform: We'll now offer a global profile system the Observer and all of its sister sites, which will allow you to follow your favorite writers or topics and basically custom curate your own little version of the Observer. This is happening across the digital media landscape. It's pretty cool but also concerning because we already self-select our news too much and avoid stories about topics that don't interest us naturally but may be important. But whatever: It's cool!
Your My Voice Nation profile -- Voice is a reference to the Village Voice, our New York sister pub -- is automatically linked with your Livefyre account, so you can ignore it entirely if you'd prefer. You can also sign in with an email address or any of your social media accounts.
I think that's it. Take it for a spin. May it be more advanced and functional than Disqus but less head-explod-y than Gawker's new system.
