Weblogs Inc. Takes "Lincoln Logs" Approach to Trackbacks

Marc Orchant discusses how Weblogs Inc. and Boing Boing are integrating trackbacks via Technorati, thereby avoiding link spam. Weblogs Inc also plans to integrate other linkback services (like Feedster, Digg, Del.icio.us, etc.) in the future. The feature is called "linking blogs." Well, I think "linking blogs" are to trackbacks what "Lincoln Logs" are to redwoods.

There are several disadvantages in this approach. The first is speed. Sometimes Technorati lags by hours if not days in digging up links. Trackbacks are instantaneous. The second is the "tap on the shoulder" impact. The beauty of a trackback is that you get to tell the other blogger you linked to them. Last but not least, this implementation is not user friendly. I need to click on a "Linking Blogs" link to find out if a post even has trackbacks. Often times you can see this right on a blogger's home page.

Comments

[Josh Hallett]

Salon.com recently did this as well. They are also using Technorati: http://hyku.com/blog/archives/000557.html

I wonder if Technorati is making a pitch to non-blog sites to incorporate TrackBacks in this way.

[Seth]

I actually blogged the TrackBack suggestion this weekend and got a comment from Jason Calacanis saying they weren't ready to implement pure trackbacks and that they'd hold off on doing something akin BoingBoing's Technorati links. Guess he changed his mind.

Original post/letter to Jason Calacanis and response here: http://www.mostlymuppet.com/archives/2005/05/28/an-open-letter-to-jason-calacanis/

[Niall Kennedy]

Technorati supports link counts through plugins or custom API implementations. Joi Ito is a good example of such an implementation.

If you create a watchlist for a URL you can see new blogs linking to your site within minutes. It is not as instantaneous as TrackBack but I am sure this is a tradeoff Weblogs, Inc. considered before rolling out the "Linking Blogs" feature.

I've talked with the folks at Six Apart about the difference between TrackBack and a Technorati cosmos and we agree there is a difference and a choice each author can make as they choose how to engage their community.

Josh, thank you for your feedback about Salon. It's always interesting to see new ways publishers expand the scope of online conversations.

Niall Kennedy
Community Manager
Technorati

[ludo]

Sam Ruby has been doing something similar for quite a while

http://www.intertwingly.net/blog/2005/05/08/Sincerest-Form-Of-Flattery

[Marshall Kirkpatrick]

I would think that something could be built that combines all of the above, PubSub, other services, etc. etc. with relative speed. (See, for example http://tagcentral.net and it's meta-search of multiple tag search engines) Basically a persistent-metasearch of the blogosphere would work wonders, wouldn't it? To use one branded solution exclusively doesn't make sense. I know that in my Newsgator inbox there's a folder containing all the above services' RSS feeds tracking links to my blog. That works well for me. There is a time lag, but I bet that could be gotten around.

For example, how about a persistent search of Furl, where a cached copy of each site Furled is saved? If people are Furling their own blog entries (a good idea I think, get it into the system - don't wait for some one else to plug it into our collective knowledge) then blog posts won't have to be machine indexed before being scoured for links like trackbacks.

Plus links sometimes drop out of your Technorati cosmos, so if you only use that system, then the whole discussion is hardly archived.

[Jason]

Frankly, all methods suck right now... Trackbacks are filled with spam and technorati is slow and--at times--unreliable.

We're going to learn from the marketplace and see how it goes. Blogsmith (our blog software) might support trackbacks or we might just build our own solution for this.... or we might just leave it up to the user to link to Feedster, Technorati, etc.

The bottom line is that this is a space that needs innovation.

Frankly, I'd like to start or partner with a service like Technorati and sell their advertising for them. If you know anyone who's built a better solution for this have them ping me... we're looking to solve this problem with a partner.