SezWho, a comment enhancement plugin, has launched a new release that incorporates a number of new features, and also also announced a partnership with citizen journalist portal Instablogs.

Instablogs originally launched as a blog network but faltered, transitioning to primarily a citizen journalist site. We last covered the site in March when it was negotiating a $3 million funding round, and the site was putting up some relatively impressive numbers (it current reports around 2 million readers).

As part of today’s release SezWho will be adding support for the following new features:

-Four new universal profile templates, including support for popular
threaded discussion formats.
-Support for local CSS and JavaScript
-Thumbs Up and Thumbs Down ratings posts
-Configurable pop-ups
-Improved support for filtering
-Support for multiple WordPress installations in a single database
-Feed incorporation for BlogCatalog

One of the knocks against some other enhanced comment sites is that they store comments away from the originating blog, which could lead to trouble should the blog ever stop using that service (though these sites are now allowing for local backup). SezWho doesn’t manage comments at all – instead it appends universal profiles that keep track of a commentator’s reputation and credibility across all SezWho-enabled blogs. This helps drive extra traffic to member blogs as SezWho recommends relevant posts, and can also lead to more worthwhile discussions.

SezWho competes with enhanced comment systems like JS-Kit, Disqus, and Intense Debate.