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# Automattic acquires Intense Debate
- URL: https://onemanandhisblog.com/2008/09/automattic_acquires_intense_de/
- Published: 2008-09-23T20:53:17.000Z
- Updated: 2015-04-08T14:18:44.000Z
- Author: Adam Tinworth
- Tags: Automattic, comments, community, disqus, intense debate, six apart, WordPress

[![intensedebate-automattic_blog.png](https://i2.wp.com/www.onemanandhisblog.com/content/images/2008/09/intensedebate-automattic_blog-thumb-200x103.png?resize=200%2C103)](https://i0.wp.com/www.onemanandhisblog.com/content/images/2008/09/intensedebate-automattic%5Fblog.png?ref=onemanandhisblog.com)

An e-mail was waiting for me when I got home, announcing that \[Automattic has acquired Intense Debate\](http://www.intensedebate.com/blog/2008/09/23/automattic-acquires-intensedebate/).

For those not familiar with it, \[Intense Debat\](http://www.intensedebate.com/)e is one of those centralised blog comment services, where you replace your own blog’s comments with a centralised service. The key advantage of this is that a commenter’s activity can be aggregated across blog. The commenter owns her own comments, if you like. Competitor \[Disqus\](http://disqus.com/) has been getting more attention, but Automattic’s acquisition will push the idea quickly towards the mainstream – and Intense Debate with it. 

Matt Mullenweg has already suggested that they’ll be \[integrating Intense Debate into the WordPress core\](http://ma.tt/2008/09/intense-debate-goes-automattic/), “as appropriate”, so we’ll rapidly see the concept spreading across the wide world of WordPress blogging.

It’ll be interesting to see how both Disqus – whose primary development has been around WordPress – and Six Apart – who have been showing more and more of a community focus in their products – respond to this.

But I think this is the first step major step towards making centralised commenting identities the mainstream – and default – way of working.