The startups based around a community seem to be in a pretty good place right now compared to startup-based technologies.

Here’s the New York Times article for reference.

Fred Wilson, VC for Disqus, posted an interesting article on the same subject.

First, you’re right. Even though startups now have an easier time designing with scalability in mind, it doesn’t actually mean any aspect will be scalable when the time comes to have a million users. I suppose Google would try to design their App Engine system in a way to minimize mistakes like this. There’s really no way to tell until we actually see some success vs. failure stats.

Second, I think like Del.icio.us, Grand Central, Blogger, etc, the acquiring company has a lot to save by not changing the community surface of the app at all. Disqus has definitely built a back door for people like though: there’s an export feature. From there I can’t imagine it would be too hard to add the comments back into your blog system with some PHP and SQL.

As for startups, the paradigm that your proposing sounds good in theory, but what if part of proving your idea involves proving that it’s scalable? Just because it works in a microcosm doesn’t necessarily mean it can work in the macro. Am I completely off base here?

Also, what happens to the subscriber base once you sell your idea to Google? I’m a little worried about the fate of my comments, tbqh, once Disqus is bought out.

Google App Engine sounds cool…