Rubel may be right, unfortunately. If so, that’s too bad – the concept of the Web becoming even more dynamic and conversational is appealing, and the fact that some major news sites tried to extend the trackback concept beyond the blogosphere was encouraging to Web 2.0 enthusiasts. Unfortunately, there are some significant issues with the the current state of trackback technology. Perhaps the biggest is trackback spam – bloggers report that the majority of trackbacks they receive aren’t legitimate.

The other is the somewhat balky nature of the technology itself. While some trackback automation exists, often a blogger must hunt down an obscure link in the story or blog post that he’s commenting on, figure out if the trackback link shown is the actual link or opens a popup with the real link, copy the link, return to his own software, and paste the link in a trackback box. I’ve found that the explaining trackbacks to new bloggers isn’t easy, and the process proves to be confusing. Even experienced bloggers may avoid the whole hunt-copy-paste process because it’s time consuming.

That’s particularly true if they are posting from something other than a laptop or desktop, i.e., a PDA, phone, etc. A less critical, but still annoying, issue is that the nature of trackback posting sometimes results in snippet gibberish or an oddly titled comment on the target site. This is far from insumountable, but the nature of a trackback usually means that it’s much less meaningful than a hand-written comment.

I think the only thing that can save trackbacks is far better automation and improved security/spam prevention. The automation piece is doable – it already operates nicely within specific platforms like WordPress. Stopping spam is a more difficult issue, but some type of third-party authentication process could take most of the burden off site owners to approve each new commenter.

Despite the stalling of trackbacks, big news sites still want to keep a conversation going. Just about all have comment features now, and USAToday’s recent redesign was all about turning the site into a news community. With or without trackbacks, Web 2.0 is still very much in vogue.

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Answering the question invariably includes a description of the attributes a website must have in order for it to be a blog:

1. Reverse chronologically-ordered content, written by the author

2. Author’s personality/passion shining through in the posts

3. Commenting – the means for visitors to comment on the blog itself

4. Trackbacks (links to and from other blog posts)

5. Content distribution by RSS

It’s attribute #3, on commenting, about which a lot of people have different opinions. Many don’t agree at all that commenting is an essential element. Influencers like Seth Godin, for instance. Dave Winer, too.

I’ve always maintained that a blog without the ability for visitors to leave comments isn’t really a blog, given that a blog is all about openness of unfiltered expression and conversation. It takes more than one to have a conversation.

I’ve been thinking about this after reading Dave Winer’s post yesterday in which he defines the one true characteristic of a blog:

The unedited voice of a person.

That’s all. Nothing else is a requirement.

That’s a pretty good definition. If you think about it, the attributes I mentioned above are the technical description of a website that’s a blog (and see Dave Winer’s 2003 definition). What Dave is talking about is the emotional description.

I very much like this emotional description. But what about commenting?

Well, I’d look at it this way – comments are to conversations as blogs are to individual and unfiltered expression.

In other words, to have a conversation, you must have either comments on your blog itself or a related device that connects people’s expressions, those unfiltered/unedited voices. Trackbacks, for instance, which link and connect content on the web.

But to be a blog, a website doesn’t require on-site comments, just the unedited voice of the blogger.

I’d accept that view.

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Neville Hobson is the author of the popular NevilleHobson.com blog which focuses on business communication and technology.

Neville is currentlly the VP of New Marketing at Crayon. Visit Neville Hobson’s blog: NevilleHobson.com.

Terapad is an interesting-looking service which, according to CEO Stephen Tual, is a game-changing offering:

[] Blogging has been technologically very active recently, but feature-wise it’s been completely stagnant. We’ve capitalized on this and added all the features of major corporate websites to the blogging equation. Indeed the feature list of the London-based do it yourself’ service appears never-ending: online shop, discussion forums, image gallery, job search, and even integration with a host of big-name third party services, such as Google Analytics and Paypal. This certainly isn’t your average blog.

As Tual says, this isn’t just a hosted blog service but an all-embracing offering that takes in broader content management features for managing a complete website.

I’ve signed up for the free 30-day trial just to see if this really can be as game-changing as Tual believes it will be.

On first looks, it certainly is very easy to set up. You can choose whether you want just a blog, a website, or both. You can add or substract elements like a PayPal-based store, discussion forums, etc.

One thing I noticed immediately is that trackbacks are not offered at all. You don’t have a choice. That’s a big mistake, in my view, one that’s unlikely to appeal to many business bloggers as trackbacks are one of the fundamental aspects of linking and connecting between blogs. At least provide the choice.

Stuart Bruce has a good summary of the features.

If you sign up for Terapad after the 30-day trial, it will cost you $18 a month. That’s on the pricey side compared to other paid-for hosted services such as TypePad or BlogHarbor, or the Yahoo! hosted blog service based on Movable Type.

Still, you’re getting more than just a blog with Terapad.

If you do sign up for the trial, take a careful look at the terms and conditions before you click the next’ button. Heavyweight conditions here, especially those relating to Stephan Tual Ltd’s rights to materials provided by users. Some businesses may not be too comfortable with this one in particular. [Edit: I linked to the wrong T&C - see the comments.]

I was curious as to what the underlying technical platform is behind Terapad. Looks like Adobe’s Cold Fusion if the .cfm file extension of all the pages is any indicator.

I’ve set up only a blog for the moment, called The Next Level? I’ll be using that as a place to comment on the service as I get to know it during the next 30 days.

You can have multiple authors for your blog (but not multiple blogs on one account). If you’re in the PR community and would like to join me in trying out Terapad as an author on my test site, just let me know.

It might be fun to experiment together.

(Via TechCrunch UK)

Neville Hobson is the author of the popular NevilleHobson.com blog which focuses on business communication and technology.

Neville is currentlly the VP of New Marketing at Crayon. Visit Neville Hobson’s blog: NevilleHobson.com.

During the Search Engine Strategies conference in San Jose last week, I had the opportunity to talk to PRWeb CEO, David McInnis about the Vocus acquisition and what lies ahead for PRWeb.

What prompted the acquisition?

Lee, I will probably blog about this more in depth this week on the PRWeb blog. We have been talking with Vocus for well over a year now. The timing was not right until recently for a few reasons. First, I felt that I had a lot left to accomplish (read try) with PRWeb before I handed the reigns over to someone else. I wanted to do these things on my own to see if I could execute a few new enhancements on my own dime and vision. In the last year alone we have really changed the practice of PR.

Thinking about everything we accomplished makes my head spin. We started the year with PRWeb Photowire, a flickrized photo newswire service. On the heels of that announcement we announced PRWeb Podcast and have completed nearly 1,000 podcast episodes with our clients. We introduced trackbacks into press releases, a concept that we have patented because of its unique value proposition for the PR space. These are just a few services that we announced in the beginning of the year.

So why did I finally agree to the acquisition? First I need to say that from the start my team and I always saw a strategic fit with the Vocus team and brand. We distribute PR and the Vocus platform manages it. Can you get a better fit than that? Secondly, I felt that it was important to take our message and vision for new PR mainstream. The Vocus acquisition allows us to do just that. They have the marketing and sales team in place to make sure that we can maintain our thought leadership in this important space. In addition, the purchase price of the acquisition validates, in a major way, our approach for news distribution. It says to our detractors, and we have had a few, that what we have been doing for the past decade is revolutionary and really is important.

Think about what we have done for a minute. In less than a decade we have democratized the media on behalf of small business and large corporations everywhere. This is a big deal.

What do you think are the most important synergies that will come out of this partnership?

I really think there is a lot to be gained from the transaction that will benefit both the combined PRWeb / Vocus user base and the PR/IR and corporate communications space. First, we now have access to a sales and marketing team. WOW. I am really excited about this. As you know, PRWeb has never had a marketing department much less a marketing plan. We have been built on 100% word of mouth. (Okay, maybe we amplified that WOM a little by supporting industry trade shows. But really we have never spent any other money on marketing.)

Vocus has a platform. Within that platform are modules that I would like to borrow and bring into the PRWeb system. I don’t know what form that will take at the moment. But can you imagine an online newsroom attached to your account? Or a fully integrated clipping and news monitoring service? I am excited about the possibilities and will keep you posted as we meet with the Vocus team over the next few weeks to determine what we are going to be able to do.

We will also be working with Vocus to integrate the PRWeb offering into the Vocus platform. This is important because, as I said earlier, Vocus manages PR. A single location for managing and distributing your PR is a logical integration.

How will PRWeb customers be impacted? Will there be any considerations for PRWeb clients that want to become Vocus clients?

How will PRWeb customers be impacted? I think we stated it best in our announcement.

You will receive the same great PRWeb service. You’ll continue to use PRWeb exactly as you do now. Without interruption of any kind, you’ll enjoy the same great features and customer support you’ve come to expect. You’ll continue to work with the same PRWeb editors and customer support staff.

Will there be any considerations for PRWeb users wishing to get on the Vocus platform? I hope so. We will be working with the Vocus team in the next weeks to determine how to do this. There have been discussions around creating a PRWeb version of the platform to address the needs of the SME and SOHO market. No promises, but I will lobby for something.

What will your role be on a go forward?

Janitor if I am lucky. No, seriously, I will remain on board for a long time to come as CEO for this business unit. Vocus has allowed me to keep my team in tact so that we can continue to grow this business unit as we have done in the past. Granted, there will be more business structure around what we do but this should not be perceptible to our customers.

My mind doesn’t stop when it comes to this space. I really like it. And CastleMonkey (that’s the CTO) and his team are cranking code as fast as we can collectively envision new ideas. So I see a long-tail on this thing.

What kind of PRWeb/Vocus integration enhancements will there be?

Plenty. I’m pretty certain we can do a really slick integration so that corporations get killer PR management AND delivery, and PRWeb clients get to experience better management of their PR campaigns, as well as increased metrics.

Thank you David!

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Lee Odden is President and Founder of
TopRank Online Marketing, specializing in organic SEO, blog
marketing and online public relations. He’s been cited as a search
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The Economist and has implemented successful search marketing programs
with top BtoB companies of all sizes. Odden shares his marketing
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daily news, interviews and best practices.

Press releases became a bit more social yesterday as PRWeb added trackback functionality. As Mike Manuel notes, this news comes on the heels of Six Apart’s commitment to making the trackback (defined) a web standard.

So, here’s a question. Will press releases ever gain the ability to also send trackbacks? I imagine this would cause blogger outrage. Taking this a step further, if trackbacks become a web standard, what will happen when ads start sending/receiving them? There’s a collision in the making as traditional marketing tools adopt social features and vice versa. It’s a necessary collision that will occur now that consumers control the message. The shakeout should be fun to watch. Which tools will become acceptable for marketers to use and how?

Steve Rubel is a PR strategist with nearly 16 years of public relations, marketing, journalism and communications experience. He currently serves as a Senior Vice President with Edelman, the largest independent global PR firm.

He authors the Micro Persuasion weblog, which tracks how blogs and participatory journalism are changing the public relations practice.

“PRWeb’s decision to allow TrackBacks is a strategic move for its customers. ‘We could have chosen to allow users to comment on the press release page but felt that it is more valuable to both our users and the blogging community to encourage dialogue outside the press release in the dialogue-rich blogosphere,’ added PRWeb’s Executive Vice President Mick Jolly.”

No question, links, be they trackbacks or otherwise, remain a currency of the conversational web, also the bane of its existence, so it will be interesting to see how PRWeb and similar services balance the promise and value of links with the limitations of technology and the constitution of spammers.

Mike Manuel is the founder of the award winning Media Guerrilla blog. Media Guerrilla is an insiders take on the practice of technology public relations with a focus on the issues, tactics and trends that are specific to the tech industry.

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While press releases have traditionally been used to announce news to the media, PRWeb has pioneered a direct to consumer model that allows companies to announce news to a broad audience using PRWeb’s distribution channels.

The addition of trackback functionality creates a link between bloggers and press releases in a way that is not found elsewhere. Now when a blog comments and cites a press release distributed via PRWeb, it can send a trackback to the release, which will in turn create a link back to the blog.

Personally, I am not so sure about the SEO value of such a link exchange, certainly no more or less than what is already happening between thousands of blogs that cite each other every day. What I do believe is that these links will drive more users to content that will be useful to them because of the relevant connections.

For example, a press release about the launch of a new line of elliptical trainers might be written up and linked to from a fitness blog. Doing so will create a trackback link from the press release back to the fitness blog.

A visitor that reads the press release from its distribution on Google News, Yahoo News or any of the thousands of other possible PRWeb distribution points will now be exposed to the fitness blog, which they might not otherwise have found.

Trackbacks to press releases has even made Steve Rubel’s wish list.

” wouldn’t it be great if press releases had comments, trackbacks and a Technorati in-bound linkmeter actually attached to them?”

My SEO company is already starting to use some of the new PRWeb features and I will post about that here. I would be very interested in comments from other readers about the new PRWeb services.

Lee Odden is President and Founder of
TopRank Online Marketing, specializing in organic SEO, blog
marketing and online public relations. He’s been cited as a search
marketing expert by publications including U.S. News & World Report and
The Economist and has implemented successful search marketing programs
with top BtoB companies of all sizes. Odden shares his marketing
expertise at Online Marketing Blog offering
daily news, interviews and best practices.

When I blogged this last story using ecto, it automatically discovered this trackback URL. More details can be found on the Yahoo News Sandbox blog. In addition, they are also rolling out new personalization and keyword highlighting features. You can demo all the new goodies on this Yahoo News! Sandbox site.

Steve Rubel is a PR strategist with nearly 16 years of public relations, marketing, journalism and communications experience. He currently serves as a Senior Vice President with Edelman, the largest independent global PR firm.

He authors the Micro Persuasion weblog, which tracks how blogs and participatory journalism are changing the public relations practice.

In case you missed it, here’s the story in a nutshell: Jeremy posted an item in March about PR’s role in customer service. Steve posted a related topic last week. Jeremy went back to his post and updated it with a trackback to Steve’s new post. Steve rejected the trackback, noting, “A trackback is a continuation of a dialogue, not a traffic-building gimmick” and “this tactic is bordering on trackback spam” and finally “This is about following blog etiquette.”

I’m not about to criticize either Steve or Jeremy. Micropersuasion is Steve’s blog and he can do with it as he pleases. But he raises two interesting issues that are worth a few sentences. First is the assertion that “a trackback is a continuation of a dialogue.” I know that dictionary and encyclopedia entries are of limited use in a discussion like this, but I checked out Wikipedia anyway and found no reference to dialogue. Wikipedia defines a trackback as “a mechanism used in a blog that shows a list of entries in other blogs that refer to a post on the first blog.” So the question becomes whether a trackback is, indeed, a continuation of a dialogue. My definitive answer: It depends.

Sure, it could be, if the blogger creating the trackback intended it that way. But I can’t uncover any requirement that it assume the characteristics of a conversation. As I see it, a post to a blog is dated, but it is also permanent (hence the notion of a permalink). Jeremy’s post may have appeared in March, but if I searched the right combination of terms, that five-month-old post could appear at the top of a Google query. In this sense, it’s not only a blog post, but an article that could be useful to somebody conducting research. As such, I find no breech of etiquette in an effort to keep the post current. Some argue that Jeremy should have added some text; Steve thinks he should have produced an entirely new post. These may have been good ideas, but on the other hand, the addition of the trackback is, as an integral part of the post itself, an update.

In any case, I don’t believe this use of trackback has anything to do with dialogue, nor does it need to.

I might question Jeremy’s motives if the trackback had no connection to the theme of Steve’s post, but in fact they were directly related. And while I don’t know it for a fact, I seriously doubt Jeremy would even consider using Micropersuasion to build traffic for his own blog. But that’s only because I know the guy. Ultimately, the issue comes down to currency. Is the revision of an old post with updated links a legitimate practice? I think it is, by virtue of the fact that the post will continue to stand on its own as a permalink.

The second issue that arises out of the debate is whether there is any defined blog etiquette at this point. While a Google search reveals nearly 15,000 posts containing the term, a quick review of the top posts reveals most are bloggers offering up their own opinions. It’s not like email etiquette, where defined guidelines have emerged and can easily be found. Blog etiquette is still evolving, and while there are certainly egregious violations (e.g., stealing somebody’s feed and posting it as your own blog entry), something like Jeremy’s use of trackbacks remains in a fuzzy grey area.

As I say, I’m not criticizing Rubel, who (like all of us) can do what he thinks is right with his blog. As for me, I wouldn’t have given the trackback a second thought.

Reader Comments…

Shel Holtz is principal of Holtz Communication + Technology which focuses on helping organizations apply online communication capabilities to their strategic organizational communications.

As a professional communicator, Shel also writes the blog a shel of my former self.

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.

Reader Comments

Steve Rubel is a PR strategist with nearly 16 years of public relations, marketing, journalism and communications experience. He currently serves as a Senior Vice President with Edelman, the largest independent global PR firm.

He authors the Micro Persuasion weblog, which tracks how blogs and participatory journalism are changing the public relations practice.