Trackbacks… Dead? Alive? Good? Bad?

Trackbacks, if you may or may not know, are a form of telling another blog that you posted something about their blog. In some cases, you get a link to your blog on their blog (and in theory, they already received a link from yours). In my mind, they are the coolest useful features (I’ve just now started to play with) in blogs in a long time for the following reasons:

• Allows a user to leave a much more detailed comment/personalized comment.
• Provides better quality links to sites than I think comments do.
• Builds up blog to blog relationships.

That said, a good number of websites out there say Trackbacks are dead. Ironically, most of them reference other people’s site for credibility, which would be a perfect opportunity to have used trackbacks the way the are intended. If you want to hear their arguments, check them out:

• Micro Persuasion
• Planet Sab
• Blogaholics

There are also some that say it’s plenty alive:

•  The Net Is Dead

Ironically, tons of blogs are also asking if it is dead…

• Open
• Willzhead

My official stance is this: How can trackback be dead, if I just issued trackbacks to 5 sites on this very topic… If you don’t have trackbacks, I think you should get them. If you do have trackbacks, I think you should use them. If you write a post on why you added trackbacks to your site, and the reason was me, then I think you should trackback to this post.

Track… Back… Jack!