Why allow trackbacks and comments on blog entries?

10 February 2009

Nobody joins an empty forum because no one wants to be the first to write something.

This is the same with blog comments. No one wants to be the first to comment.

So if there's a chance that people might not comment, is there any point allowing people to comment?

Well if it's a topic that someone is interested in then they will have more reason to want to comment.

Comments allow discussions and debates to occur between the blogger and blog readers. Having comments shows that the blog is being viewed and that people are interacting with it.

Having no comments on a particular blog entry does not mean that it is not being viewed though, it may just mean that people don't find it interesting, or that it's not their field of expertise.

Trackbacks on the other hand are quite different.

For starters - people viewing my blog don't necessarily have there own blog, and even if they do, it may not have trackback functionality.

Trackbacks are not allowed on the popular blogger.com from Google and so that's a large audience that are ruled out straight away.

Even if a blog does allow trakbacks, like TypePad does, it doesn't mean that the user has it turned on. And if it is turned on it may not be a blog of interest to the reader.

Comments can be left by anyone, whereas trackbacks can only be left by a very small percentage of people.

http://www.peternichol.com/entry/trackback/18/

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