[slightwinder]

Pingbacks come from the blogging-world. Originally the concept started with traceback in 2002 and evolved over time. It basically is a mean to create a kind of decentralized conversation where each persons response is hosted on their personal space, instead of a central one. Because of this communications are far slower and smaller, compared to a forum or services like twitter. But they are also usually more focused and of higher quality, because responses tend to be full fledged articles, written to an uninformed audience, instead of some direct responsing text-barf.