The value of a link

Two days ago I wrote Doubbletalk about the irony of a couple of links on the Scripting News page. Dave Winer was nice enough to link to my piece yesterday with some clarification that got me thinking. First, Winer said:

Josh Brauer comments on my linking to a story about Apple a couple of days ago. I asked him to post this to the web, and I thank him for that. There is a misunderstanding. I point to pieces from Scripting News only because I think they're interesting. I often point to pieces I disagree with. A link from Scripting News says nothing more than I thought it was interesting. No other endorsement.

I'm intregued by this as it has me thinking. Winer and I both have pages we call "News" pages. Winer's is much more robust and has a more defined purporse and audience than mine.

Value The Oxford American Dictionary says value is the amount of a good or service that is considered to be equivalent to something else for which the thing can be exchanged. What is the value of a link on the web? In my case it's a few hundred hits. I give somebody links and they get a hundred or so more hits than if I hadn't. Winer gives me links and a few hundred more people come my way and get my spin on life.

Like so much of the web it's hard to place value on electrons. Sure the drive in my machine costs a few hundred dollars, my internet connection costs a few hundred dollars, and so on. But how much does that mean each link costs?

It's interesting It's often been my policy to link to something that is interesting. Often, though, the process of linking to interesting material is limited by my sense of what is proper. A while ago I linked to And Adam Knew Eve: A Dictionary of Sex in the Bible because it's interesting. Do I agree with all of what is said? No. I struggled with it because I try to keep things readable for most families. In the end I deceided it was good enough content and there and it was presented in a way that was approprate.

I've written about the Klan and other haters of human life in the past. While I'm sure there are sites to link to an occasionally I surf past them out of "interest" in what people with other views are doing I choose not to link to them. Do I pretend that by not linking to them they will be ignored? Not at all. It is more a matter of not wanting to be associated with hatred. In the same way I choose not to link to pseudo-science sites or to those who fill up bits without saying anything.

There are also many things in life that are interesting but so far from our current frame of reference to be of little value. One could spend hours, weeks or years looking into the possibilites of mining on Mars. Possible? yes. Probable? In my lifetime. Worth my spending much time on? Not now. That is why I depend upon a number of people I consider credible sources to show me what they think is important on the web.

I do surf on my own, I have custom built searches, I find things that aren't on other people's news pages. However, the vast majority of what I find is on a select set of pages that top my hit-list page.

Everybody Thinks This whole thing started as a comment on Fred Langa's piece. Dave Winer commented this morning on his page that the mail continues to flow. It's probably different than mine, but I have to agree with his comments about people with hair-triggers on their e-mail send buttons.

Responses To all who have written me. 1) I know you can buy Mac's and PC's for less than $2000. That wasn't the point. 2) For those who suggest that I slighted Linux, it has little to do with what I was talking about. I use it all the time (including MkLinux and LinuxPPC which is serving this up right now). 3) To the gentleperson who suggested running Lniux on the iMac, yes, the kernel boots, it's a little hard to use as USB dirvers (i.e. for the keyboard/mouse) don't work.... minor detail.

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