Google says that Google+ is fetchin’ — here’s what would make it work

Dear Google, you still want to make Google+ a thing? Well, first you need to apologize for killing Google Reader and for getting rid of the blog search option.

Those were great moves for Facebook and the AOL-ization of the Web — but they were both really, really bad news for bloggers and blog readers. Fix that, then maybe we’ll talk about Google+ as something other than a punchline.

Here’s what might interest me in Google+: Give it a trackback feature. Only better.

For a few glorious weeks in the early 21st century, we had this thing called “Trackback.” It was terrific. You’d write something on your blog or website and it would ferret out any other blog posts or websites engaging with that content. It spawned links and conversations and cross-pollinations that would never have otherwise occurred. It got us talking — and listening.

Then Trackback drowned in a flood of spam for Cialis and porn sites and clickbait and all the garbage we’d probably refer to as the “darkweb” if that didn’t already mean something else. But we still need something like Trackback, and we still miss it.

Now more than ever, since our time on the Web has gotten splintered into various platforms. A cross-platform trackback function that encompassed all of those platforms — publishers, blogs, Twitter, Facebook, Yelp, LinkedIn, YouTube, Amazon reviews … the whole shebang — would be invaluable. And it seems like something the folks at Google ought to be able to pull off, maybe better than anyone else.

Done right, it could also be a way of reclaiming the Web from parasitic aggregators and click-baiters. That click-bait ad linking to some aggregator’s sloppy rewrite of a Cracked.com article? It would now track back to the original content it hijacked/stole, restoring traffic and attention and credit to where it belongs.

When I see the next-generation of Google+ offering something like that — something that rewards content-creators, thereby encouraging the creation of content — then I’ll start paying attention. Until then, I’ll just assume that Google+ will continue to be — like Facebook — another gated community designed to make all those content creators work for its benefit, for free. And that is, to use Google’s own word, evil.