Jason Calacanis has posted an excellent piece on “linkbaiting” that you should read. Linkbaiting essentially involves egging someone on with a blog post so that they link back to you. The concept is that if you do it enough, you get tons of links which can lead to tons of relevancy and if you can monotize those clicks you can turn them into cash.
Calacanis is best known as the creator of Weblogs, Inc. (which owns Engadget) which was acquired by AOL for US$25 million in 2005.
Calacanis is sometimes referred to as one of the pioneers of blogging, but I have to take exception to that. Although I’m certainly jealous of his financial success (kudos, my brother) my PowerPage.org was launched in 1995 almost two years before Dave’s Scripting News and Slashdot were a glimmer in Dave Weiner and Cmdr Taco’s eyes.
What’s funny is that Calacanis is a vocal critic of Digg gaming, black hat SEOs and PayPerPost yet he’s making a game out of gaming Google! Is he Hypocritical? Or does it fall within the bounds of satire? I’m not entirely sure, but it certainly worked on me.
I took the bait Jason. Where’s my link? 