I recently installed the Tweetbacks plugin by Joost de Valk which adds tweets that link to your blog posts as comments:

People are talking about your posts, and not only in the comments to your post. A lot of that conversation is happening on Twitter, and now, you can take that conversation right back to your blog! This plugin imports those tweets about your posts as comments. You can display them in between the other comments on your blog, or display them separately.(Yoast)

The name Tweetback refers to the Trackback and the Pingback, the two common link-notification systems in blogs. For more information On Using Manual and/or Automatic Link Notification Systems read my post on the Blog Herald. The spam problem that has haunted both the trackback and the pingback is now also haunting the tweetback. The initial version of the plugin automatically approved every single tweetback which caused a lot of spam in my comments. The current version both allows you to disable automatic approval but it also allows you to filter usernames. This is a great improvement over the first version but it still requires a lot of manual moderation.

This manual moderation in the case of trackback and pingback spam has been largely automated through anti-spam plugins which are quite good at keeping the spam out. Unfortunately the tweetback is not an official protocol nor largely adopted yet so there is no anti-spam mechanism available except for manually filtering out those accounts that spam you.

So why am I experimenting with Tweetbacks? Because, as the plugin description states, a lot of the blog conversation is moving to Twitter. So far, most tweetbacks aren’t conversational responses but link recommendations to my blog posts. However, I do feel that this plugin might provide valuable insights into connecting two platform that I see as complementary: blogs and Twitter.

Jonathan Bailey raises Tweeback copyright issues on the Blog Herald in Tweetbacks, Copyright and Scraping by stating that

Where trackbacks are sent from the linking site and comments are left intentionally by the visitor, these plugins are different in that they activelhy go out in search of these “tweetbacks” (including parsing URL shortening services), even though the creator has taken no steps to ensure they appear on the site.

I see linking as an active state of connecting one page to another, whether it’s a Twitter status or a blog post. Linking is always a conscious choice and as the web is built on links there will always be tools that will want to connect as many links as possible. If you don’t want to appear on a site, then don’t link.

Saturday afternoon I went to one of New York City’s billions of Starbucks for the New York City WordPress November Meetup. Even though only a few people attended it was very interesting to meet fellow WordPress users and enthusiasts. WordPress was applauded for its ease of use, the fact that its free and that it has a huge developer community.

Easy to use

One person who attended the meeting had not even begun using WordPress yet and mainly came to the meeting to find out if WordPress is the right tool for his purpose. Other people set up some blogs for friends who had no computer knowledge at all. Because the WordPress interface is so easy, all these blogs are now actively used by people who hardly had any computer skills.

It’s free

The fact that it’s free is a big motivation for using the software. Nearly all WordPress plugins and themes are free too so you can customize your blog to your wishes.

The huge (developer) community

We often referred to all the wonderful people who make plugins and themes, write excellent articles on blogging and WordPress and answer questions on the forums. The fact that there is such a innovative community behind WordPress was a big choice in choosing WordPress.

Lorelle was mentioned a few times by other people as a major resource for excellent articles on blogging and WordPress:

What interested me most was that it is hard to talk about WordPress only. We talked a lot about WordPress plugins, themes, WordPress MU and shared some tips but we often went “offtopic” as well. We talked about content management systems in general, Joomla, photo editting software, hosting and various other programs and services.

WordPress and blog software are tightly knit into a web of services and software. You cannot talk about starting to blog with WordPress without talking about hosting and databases. It is hard to talk about WordPress and uploading pictures without talking about photo editing software or services such as Flickr. When we exchanged contact details I was really happy with my new MOO business cards, it makes it fun to exchange business cards!

The only negatives of the meeting were the fact that Starbucks has no free wifi and that it took forever to get a skim milk latte with sugar-free hazelnut syrup.

I also wrote a piece on this meetup and The Value of Meeting Your Fellow Bloggers – Offline! for the Blog Herald.

I am proud to announce that I have joined the Blog Herald. The Blog Herald has been blogging about the blogosphere since 2003 and has since become an established source in the blogosphere. I have been reading the Blog Herald for a while now and was absolutely thrilled when they asked me to write for them. I will be joining an excellent team of bloggers including Lorelle VanFossen, Tony Hung, Chris Garrett, (founder & ex-Blog Herald/now TechCrunch-blogger) Duncan Riley and more.

I will be blogging about blogging and blog software from an “academic” point of view. My first series of posts will be related to my upcoming thesis on Blog Software and the Act of Blogging.

You are welcome to read and comment on my first post at the Blog Herald: “Rethinking the Blog as Database“