You are who you link

If you read the comments to my previous post on Bitch PhD you’ll see that she has already replied to me after following her site meter statistics to see whose linking her. This is part of the hypertextual power associated with blogging that fascinates me most. Aside from the ability to edit posts and remove comments that you might not like, and even the ability to disable comments all together and “hide” posts, the power of writing online is staggering. It’s still surprising to me when I receive comments or hear in the hallways that people are reading my blog. Even more fascinating to me is the phenomenon of people actually linking to my blog as a result of my linking to their blog. But this is a lesson I learned from Jim Moore at BloggerCon2—the way to become an A-list blogger or a blogger that everyone reads is to read those A-list blogs, leave comments, and link to them so they start returning the favor.

Jill/txt writes about this reciprocity in her essay, “Links and Power: The Political Economy of Linking on the Web” which describes links as “the currency of the Web. With this economic value, they also have power, affecting accessibility and knowledge on the Web.” She describes Google as having changed searching the Web “by using links as the primary method of determining the value and thereby the deserved visibility of a web site.” She continues:

Google indexes links between web sites and interprets a link from A to B as an endorsement of B by A. Links can have different values. If A has a lot of links to it, and C has very few, then a link from A to B is worth more than a link from C to B. The value determined in this way is called a page's PageRank and determines its placement in search results [2, 7, 14].

The use of the term “endorsement” calls to mind political campaigning which is further supported by Walker’s discussion of the economy of links. She argues that after Google, “the economy of links is not product oriented. It is service oriented, and the service is the link. The link is an action rather than an item; an event, rather than a metaphor.” A perfect example to illustrate this discussion is the innovative use of the Internet by Howard Dean’s campaign. (See also “political blog” at Wikipedia).

Driven by campaign manager Joe Trippi’s fascination with technology and consulting experience on the Presidential campaigns of Edward Kennedy, Walter Mondale, Gary Hart, and Richard Gephardt (‘88), the Dean for America Internet campaign became, and some experts say still remains, the one to emulate. As Trippi recalls in his book The Revolution Will Not Be Televised: Democracy, the Internet and the Overthrow of Everything:

People often ask me which came first: the Dean campaign’s embrace of the Internet or the Internet’s embrace of Howard Dean. The answer is that it was a little bit of both. The curtain was rising on the Internet political movement right about the time we made the decision to turn on the lights.
But we almost missed our cue. (85)

He goes on to explain that after suggesting the Dean website put a link to Meetup.com, which defines itself as “an advanced technology platform and global network of local venues that helps people self-organize local group gatherings on the same day everywhere” (“About Meetup”), he was told that “some people in the campaign didn’t think it was a good idea to put up a link to another website” (Trippi 85). Trippi’s response was, “That’s what the Internet is…a bunch of websites linking together. Just put it up there” (85).

It was this lack of trust in Trippi that many say ultimately led to the downfall of Dean when it mattered—offline; however, I see Trippi’s straightforward explanation of linking on the Internet as the campaign’s first move toward achieving the labels Open Source and grassroots. Walker would approve of Trippi’s logic because she argues, “Links have value and they give power. Power and knowledge are intimately connected.” (Go here for jill/txt’s posts on Howard Dean).

If we reflect on this connection between power and knowledge, what is especially revealing is the lack of links to other sites on both johnkerry.com and georgewbush.com, which proves that many are still cautious about “endorsing” other sites. However, as we discussed in the Presidential Bloggers session at BloggerCon2, this is more harmful to their campaign because it shows that they are not using the Internet as a way to learn or open the dialogue to views other than their own. As such, the Internet is not “the electronic agora” Howard Rheingold described in his book The Virtual Community. Walker closes her essay with the following which I feel best sums up the value of links:

There is no moral high ground here where we can ignore the political economy of links and remain pure and clean, thinking only of the felicity of links, their usability or functionality or beauty. We are participants in this power structure whether we like it or not. We can criticise it, reflect upon it, approve of it or try to subvert it. We must not ignore it.