Thursday, February 09, 2006

Let them eat cake

Seoul Hero points out a glaring deficiency in the chess blogosphere (which has been mentioned here on a number of occasions):

"Speaking of chess blogs, why do the most famous ones never link to each other on their sidebars? One would think chess was a solipsistic activity or something."

Without naming names that we all know in any case, it is somewhat remarkable that the brand name chess blogs do so little cross-linking. This is not the case in other parts of the sphere where, for example, even the most popular political blogs like Daily Kos and Instapundit link liberally (no pun intended). Perhaps the individualistic nature of the game of chess is a factor, or perhaps these "chess blogging stars" have yet to understand that no matter what your level of readership you almost always get back more than you give by cross-linking. Quite simply, linking with others serves to increase the size of the pie (i.e., visitors) for everyone.

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