Here’s an idea.

You know about Web 2.0, right?  Social networking, the semantic web, blah, blah, blah.  Well, I got to thinking about the one aspect of that stuff I actually buy into: Trust linking.

There are a hundreds — maybe even thousands! — of hyperlinks out there on the world wide web.  You can’t check every web site to see if it might contain something that’ll interest you.  Instead, more often than not, you rely on some other method.  Searching for specific information is easy — Google to the rescue — but I’ve noticed that when I’m just surfing, I only really follow links that are either popular (everybody’s linking them) or links presented by people I trust.

If I enjoy a website, I’ll probably bookmark it or, better yet, subscribe to it.  And later, if the owner of that site decides to link to another site, there’s a good chance I’ll follow along.  Why?  Because by bookmarking their site, I’ve decided that their opinion is worth reading.  I trust that the author won’t waste my time.  The content they’re linking to may not even be in one of my areas of interest, but often I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt.  It’s the trust that matters.

Web 2.0 sites like Technorati are based on popular linking.  Del.icio.us thrives on trust.

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