Basically people reading my blog can now create their own forums through their comments. I hope we can use it on howardlindzon.com to create better discussions around my postings and get some dialogue.

Today Disqus is announcing a new round of financing and a new set of features. Fred and Brad (Union Square Ventures) led the round with Naval Ravikant and ex-Googler Aydin Senkut. Our Knight’s Bridge fund was also an investor.

The Union Square blog has a detailed post on the opportunity . It’s a great read.

One feature in the updated beta that I really like are the community pages. Check out mine here. People can now track all of my comments across all blogs and also see who comments the most on my blog.

Another cool thing is the social identity that will follow commenters onto other sites that have disqus installed. So if you create a disqus account (it takes 5 seconds) it will allow you to comment on my site and fred’s with out having to sign in each time. Its really easy to use (which I like) and streamlines the commenting process by making it interactive.

You can also track other commenters (making it more social) so you can follow what they are saying on other websites, which is pretty cool. Think of it like an OpenID, but for commenting.

There are some more updates, but they are more technical so read Daniel Ha’s post on the updates.

Not only is it free, but it works on all the major blogging templates like WordPress (which I use for this blog), Blogger, MovableType and Typepad.

Social leverage is my personal favorite them for venture investing. Om has a good post on Disqus.com . I love social leverage and don’t think you can blow yourself up tapping it. Banks call it the multiplier effect. Problem is you get a credit crisis.

Sign up for an account and keep the comments coming.

Discloser: I am WAY LONG on Disqus and an investor.

I am an advisor to Lotame. Andy and I became great friends from his blind trust and video passion investment in Wallstrip, where he sat on the Board. He was a great inspiration to the team with his positive energy and ideas. Andy is the perfect leader fr a start-up and now gets to prove it further.

The money raising process is grueling and I spent some time with Andy during the process. Hopefully he will share some of the lessons on his blog. We did chat Friday about Black Licorice. Andy tells me you either love him or hate him, like Black Licorice. Me… I love black licorice. I love ‘good and plenty’ candy and just straight up black sticks of it.

You can’t/won’t please everybody so you must trudge forward in the stocks and entrepreneurial world. Head up and guns blazing. I expect to carry black licorice to all future important meetings. Good ice breaker.

Disclosure – Long Lotame.

If you are starting a web business today, how about a ‘Chief Revenue Officer’ and ‘Chief of Burn Rate Control’ – that reports to the founder and investors

Too many biz plans with ‘free’ as the basis for building a business around eyeballs that will some day lead to ads that nobody clicks on.

I am not saying that ‘Freemium ‘, as Fred calls it, is dead. BUT, if you don’t have MAJOR VC backing or lightning strikes your genius application, than really, why bother.

I don’t have the energy anymore to start or back a business that relies on building eyeballs first and no click throughs later.

If WordPress had a ‘Chief Revenue Officer’, someone could at least be ‘FIRED ‘ for not calling me to ask me to pay SOMETHING, ANYTHING (I will pay $240 if someone from WordPress just picks up the phone and calls me to ask for it) for all the wonderfullnessessisness that this software has brought to me. If they are just expecting to me to pick up the phone and donate, I won’t.

Waaaaay to much revenue being left on the table by Web 2.0 companies and way too many Web 2.0 companies being started and funded without revenue number one on their mind. It is really time to start caring if you are a founder and a VC.

UPDATE – Since the above won’t happen, check out these 101 freebie sites that Business Week highlights …woooo :) .

As simple as winner/loser is fine.

Here is the website.

Here is their sales pitch on Donny Deutsch: