In what many readers here will no doubt see as a positive development, Michael Arrington of TechCrunch announced the popular blog will no longer link the names of companies they cover to the CrunchBase, the network's internal database on company information and resources.As he wrote in a post today:
"We started linking to CrunchBase often in our posts. This tends to drive some readers absolutely nuts because they want to go to the company, not CrunchBase, when they click a link. As of today that policy is being discontinued."
I've been a vocal advocate for clarity in linking practices, and generally dislike unnecessary internal linking. Though I didn't call out TechCrunch for this practice, many here did in our previous discussions of common behavior from leading tech blogs.
Arrington and his blog network, despite the occasional criticism, have done excellently well at making a name for themselves, and becoming one of the leading resources for Web 2.0 information and news. I applaud this move, and hope that others will look to the leader and follow suit.
that is good news - i always HATED that about techcrunch. my own policy is pretty vague, i try to link to others but I think I link to myself quite a lot - more because it's easier and I usually am talking exactly about what I reference earlier rather than another post which may be the same general topic but off point.
ReplyDeleteyou've always made some good points on the issue though, at some point I'll come up with a firm policy.