A friend of mine had asked for a critique on a (fairly successful) website that he’s largely responsible for, and I had forgotten my offhand comment until it was repeated back to me today. My biggest complaint about the site? "You have no presence in the part of the web that has links."

I think that sums up not just the blogosphere, but the ancillary parts of the web peopled by web enthusiasts, by Google addicts, by news junkies, by young people who’ve grown up on the web, and of course by bloggers. It’s still a small slice of the web overall, but it has an incredibly disproportionate influence on not just the rest of the net, but on contemporary culture as a whole.

I don’t know that I’d have guessed 10 years ago that there would be parts of the web that aren’t link-dense, and that are largely limited to internal links. But people like to put up walls, I guess. At least until they see what opportunities it costs them.