FriendFeed should send pingbacks to blogs

There have been concerns raised[1] that discussion on FF takes away from discussion at the source (e.g. a blog post is linked and discussed on FF rather than in the comments of that post).

Why not deal with this the way that blogs normally do, with pingbacks? Whenever a new link is added to FF, FF just pings that URL back. If it's a blog, a pingback will appear in the comments linking to the FF discussion, just as it would link to a post in another blog.

But it gets better. If FF pings *all* URLs back, other services can choose to accept pingbacks too.

For example, if someone on FF linked to this GS issue, and GS accepted pingbacks, a link to the FF discussion would appear below. I would get a notification via GS, and I could choose to follow the link. Anyone else visiting the issue on GS could do likewise. Anyone on FF might follow the original link back and contribute to GS (e.g. if someone resolved the issue I would come back here and say so).

Now, this last issue depends on whether individual sites want to support external links[2], but many blog engines *already* support this, and for this reason alone I think it would be a worthwhile feature.

[1] I remember this from when FF was launched, and these concerns are referenced in http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?t...

[2] I'm sure very few will, which is a great pity. This is a tangent to my core suggestion, so if you think it warrants discussion, please get in touch!