Trackback, Blob, Web 2.0, etc.

Recently I was asked by a blogger about the advantages of trackback. Is it beneficial to the readers, or just only other bloggers? This is more a practical question to think over given the fact that installing trackback may open another channel for spam information. The purpose of the trackback seems easy to achieve simply via comment. So why there are still people who advocate for trackback? The reason is that they are just not practical. They believe in something conceptual of the term 'trackback' and 'blog'.

In the dream of the Web 2.0, blogs will be replacing conventional websites as a new form of content providing. Besides the superficial appearance as a chronicle 'log', blogs provide views of the bloggers that are more 'personal' and avoiding any party influences. Although this dream is really illusory, blog also provide two distinct features - comment and trackback.

What is Trackback?

Trackback, like XML content feeding service (RSS. ATOM), was born together with weblog as part of the concept. As most introductions describe, when a blogger comes across a post on another blog (Blog B) the subject of which he also want to blog about, he not only return to his own blog (Blog A) and write the post, but also include the trackback link provided by the corresponding post of Blog B and ping it, resulting in a notice appearing in that post of Blog B, so that the blogger of Blog B know there is someone blogging on the same issue. This description, however, attaches a particular objective to trackback. It seems like trackback is only benefiting the blogger of Blog B. The fact is more than that. As trackback directing readers of your post to another post of the same subject, it's actually connecting ideas and views of the same subject. Each connection is deliberately made with reason that the maker believed. Ideally, by trackbacking, views on the same issue will be inter-connected as a network which is built according to the compromised wills of a group of bloggers. This kind of network is one of the differences that makes the web upgraded to 2.0 - the web of ideas.

Trackback vs Comment

In the conventional Web 1.0 system we have BBS, where you can post new message or reply to messages post by others. You must be familiar with this kind of reply which has some referential URLs pasted that may provide more information, opposite opinions, or materials that help clarify the issue and so on. When in the comment system of blogs, you can do the same thing - replying with related URLs below the post of corresponding subject. Particularly, if you are also a blogger and have just blogged on similar subject, you may want to paste the permanent link of your post to the guest blog comment field and inform that blogger of your post. So, you may wonder, why trackback is still needed when comment can do the same?

Blog, unlike BBS, is a collection of more seriously written contents. In BBS you can just cry out with no meaning or purpose while replies may still rise to dozens. Although you can do the same in blog (in fact you can do what ever legal), people just don't appreciate that. Unlike in BBS, posts and comments are of different natures in blogs. We like reading blogs because the posts are not only real personal views but also more than irrational cry-outs. So blogs have more condensed contents in it than in BBS. While you can reply with long paragraphs to a short message in BBS, you are not supposed to do so in the comment field of a blog. In the dream of Web 2.0-ers, again, everyone is a blogger, and ideas should always be blogged rather than commented out. Of course, you can leave phrases like "words of wisdom" or "rubbish" , which is commentarial, in the comment field, but if you have more to say - you have a unique idea about this topic - you are supposed to blog it out in you own blog with a trackback to the current post instead of typing all of it in the comment field below that post. This is the moment when trackback is useful.

Trackback vs URLs

Although the purpose of trackback can be similarly achieved by leaving in a comment field other URLs that blog the same thing, people can just post more URLs besides permanent link of a blog post, e.g. an article from New York Times. One of the differences here is that information or opinions from, say, New York Times, is less or not 'personal' as those from blogs, believed Web 2.0 dreamers. Trackback of your blog, instead, generated a trackback link for each post of your blog for other bloggers - me for instance - who can then ping this link with my trackback systems and send an XML-standard abstract of my post on similar subject to your blog system, and the abstract and link to exactly my post will appear below the corresponding post of your blog in an organized form separated from the comment block. That means, trackback link exclusively relatedly to blog contents.

Another difference between trackback and URL pasting is that a trackback is provided by the owner of the idea, i.e. a certain blogger, while a URL is not necessarily so. Ctrl_C/Ctrl_V has created huge amount of identical contents in the Internet, and unfortunately, these contents have a unique URL each. No one, neither the URL provider nor the webpage of that URL, is responsible for the contents, because no one knows whether the contents are just copied from another webpage. Information thus is huge in Web 1.0 which was once called the information highway, but not so reliable as it later shows. This also frustrated original writers, whose works have been copied, revised and distorted. Trackback, by linking only to the sources of contents, avoids the possibility of third-party revision or distortion, creating a 2.0 version of information network that is richer in both responsibility and reliability.

Yes, trackback is creating a different Internet, as implied above. Remember how do you find information of a certain subject? Suppose you are a classical music fan and you may have several classical music forums in your Favourites folder. You post your views on, for example, Beethoven Sym. No.7 conducted by Carlos Kleiber or Brahms Violin Concerto played by J. Heifetz, to one of these BBS's, and there will be replies. You check your post for new replies from time to time to know what others think about these records. That means you have to go to some places by yourself to get a particular type of information. Furthermore, you may sometimes feel annoyed that some classical music forums are just superficial, lack of depth, or just not exclusive enough in music - for instance - occasionally there are messages about Britney Spear. Unfortunately, you can do nothing about this, because BBS is managed by a limited number of webmasters according to their principles. But trackback is changing all of this, because the connection linking to every post is made by the own will of the author of that post. He trackbacks another post with his or hers because he or she thinks they are relevant, or one being instructive to another. The author decides only one link that his or her own work is involved. It's not allowed or appreciated in trackback system to spread links of contents by other authors without permission. Therefore trackback is able to create a fair, democratic collection of related information network. This network of classical music will not contain things about Britney Spear, or if it does, it must has respectable reasons. Contents and ideas thus do not aggregate into BBS, forums or special websites, or be copied and pasted everywhere. They stay only where they are born, while substantially logically related one another. There is no room for copiers and third-party revisions, protecting the writer's labor, while keeping the hyperlinks, protecting the sharing nature of the Internet.

A Dream Never Comes True?

This is a conceptual dream, indeed. It is no long something technical but ethical. This dream would come true only if each Internet user were independent in mind, active in thinking, brave in expressing, and respectful to other's work. Those who are lazy to think in his or her own way, who are afraid of different opinions, or who likes to copy and paste will not appreciate the conceptual blog or trackback much, but spam is enough for them to close trackback feature of their blogs. Most people are just using blog as diary+personal BBS. They make their blog into a forum of friends. Some Blog Service Providers (BSPs) are also on their ways to create social features, and calling each of their products 'striking Web 2.0 revolutions'. The real Web 2.0 trackback, however, may only be a dream far from realization.

Maybe it is time to return to the primitive question: Why do you blog? I think Herman Melville put it best when he said,

We cannot live only for ourselves. A thousand fibers connect us with other people; and among those fibers, as sympathetic threads, our actions run as courses, and they come back to us as effects.