Linking (Giving Credit) is a Critical Part of Web Culture

I love this piece at GigaOM, "Why links matter: Linking is the lifeblood of the web."

I'm probably an over-linker, but sometimes when I find a widely available YouTube I don't always give a hat tip. It depends on where I find the video. Bloggers like to link their friends and diss their enemies, so that explains a lot of it. (For blog posts, I mostly link to the blog where I find the reported information initially, and thus sometimes the person who broke the story might not get the link --- and again, the friends/enemies distinction might come into play here.)

I'm probably violating some of the correct norms, but then again, I think that's how most folks roll, actually. For the most part, I probably link to much. Folks have even complained about that to me in fact.