This relates to what Steve Gillmor talks about with regard to gestures^[177] and attention and the like. If I put a link in a blog post, it suggests that I find value in what lies at the other end of the link. It means that I think you should click the link and see what's going on.

So think about that for a moment. Think about your behavior with links. When you write about Britt Raybould's Bold Words blog,^[178] but you don't put a link to it, you're signifying that you're not interested in people following the link to discover her work. When you talk about LinkedIn, but you link it back to your own blog post instead of to LinkedIn, you're signifying that you want to keep traffic on your site. Sometimes this makes sense. If I said, "Here's my other article about LinkedIn," then that makes sense. But if every link keeps the audience on your site, you're telling me that you don't want me wandering around the Web sharing attention.

Years ago, when I got the first-ever Mac, it came with HyperCard. It was so amazing to me. I could link up words inside of text and give you all kinds of nuance and reference and sidebar conversations, all the while keeping the original document in-line. Links are part of that same magic, only better. Because HyperCard, at least when I was starting out with it, was relegated to referencing my own computer and documents, whereas links let me point all over the Web.

To that end, you can build amazing and interesting networks of thought. You can build posts that give people an understanding about something by synthesizing data for them. Sometimes, you're not the authority, but you are always in a position to thread up some articles, videos, and other resources to build out something of use to you. Being helpful means finding the right resources for the point you're hoping to make.

If you click the photo included in a blog post, it takes you back to the artist who created it. Though it's not a perfect way to give credit (Steve Garfield^[179] schools me on this all the time), it's better than just using the picture in my blog post—and better than just writing, "Jared did this work."

In this world of free, one of the only currencies we still seek and demand are links. Note that my work is all available to you for free, to repurpose in lots of ways. The only thing you can't legally do with my work is directly make money from it. (Mind you, if my ideas help you make money because you execute them in your own way, you get to keep that with my blessings.) However, you can repost every single blog post I put out on your blog, on your dog's blog, wherever you want, provided you give a link back to me at www.chrisbrogan.com. That's not asking a lot in return for all that I put into my work. Right?

So, links are a very important piece of Internet currency. They are the currency of attention in that way.

Your phone has plenty of buttons on it, but until you push them in the right order, it's a lot of capacity and not enough intent. Building web pages like blogs and wikis and the like are your chance to build a network of your own intentions. We do this all the time. FriendFeed is a tool to show you links to my entire Web presence. So is Lijit.^[180] Twitter, blogs, and everywhere that we can input HTML are ways to thread the needle.

When you add links to a page, you tell a story. You build networks of value. For example, if you build a blog post called "The Top 20 Torrent Sites," you've just given others a resource to improve their Web experience.

Go forth. Create networks. Learn how to make nice, beautiful, useful links, give people credit and signal your intentions, and thread a beautiful net for people who can use your help.

The return value is how this all ends up working for us. Doc Searls^[181] might call this a way to make money "because of value" from what we're doing. ("Because of" effect is making money because of something rather than with it.) Do you agree?