Every now and then you listen to Steve Gillmor and just shake your head. Somethings I think he's semi-right-on. But his whole "linking is dead" meme is just off-base.

How do you do a blog without linking? He says it forces you to explain what you're talking about, but to me, all it does is force someone to search for what you're talking about - and if no one links to it, it's not getting indexed, which means you can't search for it.

Then he does something that's key to arguing when you know you've lost: You force an exclusive?decision to a non-exclusive question when he asks, "Would you rather I talk about you or link to you?" Obviously, I'd rather have you talk about me rather than link to me, but there's no reason you can't do both.

Take one of my latest posts, for example. I mentioned that Mix06 content is online. What if I hadn't linked to it? What if no one linked to it, but everyone talked about it? Would you be able to find it? I think I did a good job explaining what the news was (it's available for 6 months for you to download) but does that do you any good if you don't know where it's at?

Then there's Steve's proclamation that linking takes you out of the context you're in. Here, he's right. But his solution is flawed. You're (most likely) viewing this via an RSS reader (and if not, why not?). He wants whatever I'm talking about available right in the reader based on what I'm talking about - that the reader should go out and grab?the RSS feed that I'm referring to. But that's not feasible. Every now and then, I'll talk about something from a few weeks ago, and it may not be in any RSS feed anymore. Or you could be looking at it a few weeks after I publish it. What then? S.O.L.? And does putting a?link in an entry force you to click it? No, it doesn't. It allows you to, but if you've seen it elsewhere, there's no need to click - just read the post, know the background, and move on. But, by not allowing them the ability to click through, you're denying them the right to find out where you're getting your information - giving credit where credit is due. How does anyone have confidence that I know Mix06 content is online if I don't link to the source? I don't have authority to put that up myself, so who would trust me? Especially if they can't find it easily.

I don't know. I think Steve offers a lot of insights (Attention is a great idea), but I'll still link. Why? Well, this post, for example. No links, so it's completely out of context. Luckily, with Google, you can find context since others link to him.

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