echo "hey, it works" > /dev/null

At the time, I noted the way that more and more information that was once delivered by independent web sites was now being delivered directly by search engines, and that rather than linking out to others, there were strong signs of a trend towards keeping the link flow to themselves.

Is Linking to Yourself the Future of the Web? - O'Reilly Radar

I may exist in a bubble¹ but it seems to me that an opposing tension is emerging. Twitter has been used² by many people as a search and question answering service, as has FriendFeed more recently. Aparently people find things like Digg useful too³. By their nature, the organic links in these serves are mostly external, though of course both services are somewhat limited by the number of followers someone has.

1. Yes, I exist in a bubble. ↩
2. Yes, when it worked, fine. ↩
3. Though for the life of me, I cannot work out why. ↩

When I came across Felix's FriendVenn, I had this advice from Duncan Riley on my mind.

I now generally unsubscribe from people who don’t follow me after some time. This isn’t immediately and you have to give people some time (I usually update my follows 2-3 times a week, so I might not reciprocate for 3-4 days) but FriendFeed is ultimately a place for “Friends.” People aren’t your friends if they are not interested in following you. Of course, I still add interesting people who pop up from time to time, but after a couple of weeks if I ...

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I signed up to FriendFeed a few days ago, after a sustained sales pitch from Andy C, who 7 minutes later asked if I "got it" yet. I've been mulling it over and while I'm not sure I completely get it, I will say that I'm getting there. Got it? I've never used a social aggregator before, and from some of the commentary I've read (and promptly lost), that's probably a good thing. The most interesting thing about FriendFeed is not the aggregation but the interaction that can take place after something shows up in a feed, which has ...

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