Steve Rubel has been talking about this for ages, and it looks like it’s coming together. He notes today that ‘Press releases became a bit more social yesterday as PRWeb added trackback functionality.’
What’s a trackback? Basically, it’s the flipside of a link. It tells you who is linking to a particular page, and in turn, lets you visit the linking page to see what’s being said about it. So in effect, trackbacks turn web pages into dialogue. (Meanwhile the inventors of the trackback, are trying to get it adopted as a web standard. This isn’t going away.)
At the moment, it’s a brave organisation which opens up its press releases like this. Imagine, letting anyone and everyone say whatever they want about your lovingly crafted press release – as a footnote on the same webpage? Not really – it’s just accepting the inevitable. The commenting will happen anyway. And you know what they say about urination and tents.
CNET News.com introduced this in November 2004, announcing it in January 2005. Hasn’t been a monster success yet. http://www.pencoyd.com/clock/2006/02/22/trackback-the-dream-lives/ for details. Hope we can all get behind this now.