Now everybody can make pingbacks, not just paid accounts

[conuly]

Which is great. azurelunatic has a whole post here about the benefits of pingbacks and when you should set them up and the whole point of this all.

However, sadly, she misses the most important reason to enable pingbacks! You should enable pingbacks because the pingback_bot is super cute. *nodnodnod* It's like having a kitten randomly visit your journal and be friendly, except it's a robot and doesn't say anything other than "Hey, somebody linked to you".

Edit: If you guys all link to this so I can see the cute little pingback bot in my comments (remember, you have to enable it or it won't work!), I'll be thrilled.

Comments

[pingback-bot.livejournal.com]

User cumaeansibyl referenced to your post from (http://cumaeansibyl.livejournal.com/493668.html) saying: [...] a bot will come and let you know when someone's linked to your entry. I am testing it with this entry (http://conuly.livejournal.com/1600487.html) by specific request of the poster. [...]

[soph.livejournal.com]

Ooo, a bug - it doesn't like empty subject lines. Funfun.

*will report that somewhere*

(You can still get to the linked post by clicking on the "referenced to your post" text, pressing TAB, then pressing RETURN.)

[rainbow-goddess.livejournal.com]

I read that, and it made no sense to me. I still do not understand what a pingback is.

[pne.livejournal.com]

OK, so you write a public journal entry, right?

And then someone else (let's call them "Jenny") thinks you wrote something really interesting, and links to your entry. Say, something along the lines of "rainbow_goddess posted an entry about wanting to be hired back by an ex-employer (http://rainbow-goddess.livejournal.com/2033623.html), and that's something I've been thinking about a lot, too, yadda yadda", or whatever.

Then people who read Jenny's journal can hop over to your entry, because she linked to it.

But perhaps it would be interesting if you knew about Jenny's entry, too -- then you could see what angle she has on going back to work with ex-employers, and see what comments Jenny's friends have left on her entry. But you don't know that Jenny's entry exists!

This is where pingbacks come into play. If you and Jenny have both enabled pingbacks, then after she posts her entry that links to yours, you'll get a visit from the pingback bot telling you about her entry.

It'll let you know that Jenny linked to your entry, and you'll also see a small snippet of her post surrounding the link text. Then you can hop over to her entry and have a look.


Did that make more sense?

[rainbow-goddess.livejournal.com]

Yes, thank you, that does make sense.

Pingback plus

[pingback-bot.livejournal.com]

User fiddlingfrog referenced to your post from Pingback plus (http://fiddlingfrog.livejournal.com/156137.html) saying: [...] to say about LJ in general, wrote up a quick guide to pingbacks. And over here we have someone who thinks the pingback bot is cute (http://conuly.livejournal.com/1600487.html)and likes to see it appear on her comments page. So not only do I get to see what happens with two links ... [...]