Free idea: Tweetback/Twitterback

I was looking into implementing this, and I thought long and hard over the technique. If twitturly had an API, it’d be easier. But I could plug right into Summize, I guess. But summize can search hashtags and anyone can really just use summize to watch hashtags, right? So what’s the point of hashtags.org, where you have to follow hashtags to get your tags followed? Why don’t they just use summize? I guess it’s good for private twitter accounts, but it’s not good for tweetback.

Tweetback is a simple idea: pingbacks for twitter. I made a post knowing that it would somehow be found by the people who run the site I referenced, because somehow it always happens on my blog here. Nobody reads this, so I’m sure they’re just using some blog search service. Anyway, they noticed. And they posted a link to my post! That’s nice, but why didn’t I get a pingback? If I link to a blog in wordpress, it pings back that blog automatically, which is awesome (because I’m not a trackback spammer). Why not a service for twitter that will de403 a url (403, i.e. redirection like tinyurl or other shortener services) in your tweets, and then pingback with the direct tweet url?

I could implement it like hashtags, just checking every url to see if it’s a blog, then checking if I could trackback that blog with my tweet URL. OR, I could just post the thing in the open and hope the twitturly guy or someone else implements it.

Just thank me if you start an actual service named ‘tweetback’. I’d love some appreciation. (If you become big, a t-shirt and sticker, too?)

(P.S., this was originally called Twitterback, but I thought tweetback was shorter and good, but either name works)