NextBillion - An Initiative of the William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan

Nothing stops a stops vibrant conversation cold like an offer for knock-off Ugg Boots, or home loan refinancing, or discounted Viagra.

Yes, the scourge of blogs everywhere, is spam. I don’t particularly like the name, because Spam that comes in a can is at least edible and provides some level of nourishment. The online variety only provides indigestion for publishers and serves up only disruption and annoyance.

Nevertheless, starting next week, we hope to drastically reduce NextBillion’s diet of the latter, and more importantly, take the NextBillion community to the next level of interaction. We’ll migrate NextBillion’s existing commenting system to Disqus,
an open-source commenting platform that might be familiar to many of you. Some very large publishers, including CNN, Engadget and the social media site, Mashable, use Disqus.

What we found appealing about Disqus, beyond its prowess for limiting spammers, is its ability to tie in social media with commenting in a way we believe our readers will find valuable. Specifically, we want to build more than a blog, but a connected community to create a community that helps our readers comment, share, debate and widen the scope of dialogue.

To leave a comment, you will be required to create a login or sync it with other social media accounts like Twitter and Facebook, for instance. A Disqus login, will allow you can search through comments you’ve left on other sites, without having to go trek back to specific site or blog entry.

Perhaps some of you already have Disqus profiles. If not, I hope you will take the opportunity to create one.

Let us know what you think, either by direct email (info@nextbillion.net) or through our new system next week.