Patrick Crozier comes up with an interesting question. Since just about everyone reads Instapundit, why bother linking to a story there? What’s gained? He then goes on to apply the same logic to Samizdata, Norm Geras, Tim Blair, Harry’s Place and here. Now I am guilty of the same sort of thinking myself. I tend not to link to those blogs that I read on a daily basis, as I assume that everyone else does as well.
Given that Mr S&M, Bunny, Blimpish (to take just three at random) are not getting 160,000 hits a day like Professor Reynolds, obviously my assumption is wrong. The real point though is that yes you should be linking to here. The ego needs feeding.
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The theory probably needs a bit more work: while anyone who reads Croziervision or here will also probably read Glenn, Tim Blair and Samizdata, they’re less likely to read a leftier site like Harry, so there is merit in your linking there.
Meanwhile, people who read Shot by both sides are probably not regular Samizdatisti or Blairites, so there’s merit in me linking to them; there’s much less point in me linking to Harry or Crooked Timber. -
I rarely link to Instapundit for this reason, but he’s the only exception. I don’t presume that there’s any other blog that all or most of my readers read, except maybe for Tim (W’s).
But it’s difficult to link to a Tim Worstall piece anyway, because when you decide to link to it, by the time you’ve come back to find it, it’s disappeared off the page under dozens of new posts, and with Tim’s Typepad archive setup it’s hard to find again.
I suppose this is an extra reason to link to a Tim W piece, because there’s no guarantee that even his own readers can keep up with his posts! -
Not only are Mr S&M, Bunny and Blimpish not getting 160 000 hits a day, they’re not even getting anywhere near your daily figures. So that means that most of your readers can’t be reading them regularly. So feel free to link.
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