Debt

And when it comes to gaining popularity for your blog by linking with everyone else’s blog on the planet in the hopes they’ll link back to you and Technorati and others will notice how ‘popular’ you are and anoint you with an official ranking which will hopefully attract even more links … okay, I can see that, but there must be a pretty strong temptation to temper what you say so as not to ‘offend’ anyone and heaven forbid, start losing links because you’re suddenly no longer considered ‘cool’ for that bang on the money post that really wasn’t too smart ‘politically’ and have therefore violated the unwritten terms of a sort of mutual admiration society and must now be considered ‘outside the pale’ of whatever mutual admiration society it was that originally welcomed you in.

In my view, a blogger’s independence is their most valuable asset, assuming they’ve got something interesting to say. And it’s the quality of the debate that is found on their blog, specifically the conversation they inspire, that makes them worthwhile, whether we agree with all of the points of view or not.

Don’t know how we can measure something as arbitrary as ‘quality of debate’, but I think that if you’ve got that on your blog, people will know it and it will not necessarily be based on the number of links you’ve got. Whether technorati et al deigns to notice you won’t matter a pair of dingo’s kidneys. If you’re marketing it, maybe by using other methods that do not depend on technorati etc and are probably more effective anyway, people are going to hear about you and come to your site to check it out, maybe even contribute. Of course, if you don’t have interesting debate, or maybe only have it now and then, I could understand falling back on the links and tags thing, which might explain part of why we have so many blogs not worth spending any time on.

It’s possible I’m not understanding links too well and since I’m planning a blog, I’m open to hearing more about how they’re useful.

I agree with everything you say, but it’ll be n easier sell once someone does come up with a reasonable business model. Saying you don’t know what a sucessfull model is and then claiming that he who links, wins makes the latter statement seem like one of faith. Of course, until someone does start allowing permalinks, this is speculative at best. Someone needs to try some things – and be prepared to adjust and then readjust. But in the long term I think your faith is well-placed.