I listened to the first part of the latest Gillmor Gang this afternoon while jogging, and that's the only reason I stumbled on the new blog that Steve Gillmor has set up - someone mentioned the name (I've forgotten who, and since Steve is utterly opposed to providing a transcript, it's just not worth my time to try and find the reference.

In any event, his new blog is what I'm on about - it's over here, and I only found it via a Google search - and it's the fifth entry (the old ZDnet InfoRouter pops to the top). That makes it harder to find than it should be (what, a link from the old blog would have been too hard?) - and Steve is continuing his practice of calling links "dead".

Here's the thing - that point of view shows that Steve is fairly deeply out of touch with how things work on the web. Sure, as he said in the Podcast, the blog is findable, even though he didn't point to it. However, that's only because he's a well known person with a reputation. Let's posit a new blogger starting out this week who follows his advice about links. Remember the line about a tree falling in a forest? It's the same thing. An arbitrary, not already well known person has to link to things unless they want to remain invisible.

Even for a well known person, it's an affectation. It makes everything you refer to harder to track down. Take his latest post: he refers to Om Malik and Robert Scoble. Both are easy to follow from my post, since I tossed in links. From his? Well, either you have those urls memorized, or you have them in your bookmarks, or you have them in your aggregator already. Otherwise, it's time to haul out the search engine.

Yeah, that makes my life as a reader of content sooo much easier. Do the world a favor, Steve - take the extra two seconds and add links. It's useful for your readers.

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