We Need Better Tools To Track Conversation
I, as many other bloggers, think that the conversation(?) between blogs/people is one of the blogosphere's killer applications. Or it should be. I know this discussion is not new, but I realized once again today that it is an absurd task to try to keep up with the discussion. Maybe, just maybe, I have an idea on a solution.
One example first: At this blog the post about different types of business blogs is one of the most referred to and discussed. You will find 8 comments and 5 Trackbacks if you read the post. But that's not a good illustration of the conversation. A Technorati search shows that the post has 17 links from 16 sources. A Bloglines Citations Search, then? They find 35 pages linking to the post.
Seems like Bloglines is the best tool to use. Let us all do citations links for every post - problem solved? No. I also use FindForwards Backlinks Alert, and they give me another picture, where it quickly becomes obvious that Bloglines does not cover the blogosphere either. Actually, these alerts are the best tool I have used so far to find out if there are discussions going on about my posts. But they does not help you. I get a couple of e-mails per hour with new incoming links, but I have no way (except manually) of attaching that information to the post.
The solution? Who knows. I am no techie, I try to stay as far away from servers and programming as possible. As a user, though, I believe FindForward is on to something. The idea of using backlinks has been discussed earlier, of course, but FindForward is doing it. It is up and running. They store information about your old incoming links to be able to send you an e-mail when a new link is used to access your page. If we in any way could mirror those stored links on our posts... goodbye Trackback.