New blogs appear at the rate of dozens per minute. Some of these blogs achieve a huge following, some just politely serve the needs of friends and family . Many hope to spread some word, yet fail to achieve any visibility. They write and write, but no one reads.
Bloggers want to be heard, and some clever ones have discovered ways to get their voice to stand out just a little bit above the crowd. The idea is simple. They link to like-minded bloggers who will link to them. Because of the way that search engines work, this raises web visibility of everyone in the group.
Academicians should perhaps take a hit from this.
On my co-author page I provide a link to all of my co-authors and co-editors. This is a way to create a neighborhood in a useful scientific way that increases the web visibility of these friends. Some of these co-authors also have linked back to me, and I genuinely appreciate such a "vote of visibility."
If you would like to cast a vote my way, I'm sure you know how. Still to make it easy, you can just cut and paste the line
<a href="http://www-stat.wharton.upenn.edu/~steele">J. Michael Steele </a>
into your web page or blog.
Naturally, you can change "J. Michael Steele" to whatever suits your style. For example, "my friend Mike" or "that notorious self-promoter J. M. Steele" --- anything is fine. Believe me. I appreciate the link, whatever the sobriquet.
Anyone in probability, statistics, finance, or webwork who wants a link from me just needs to drop me a note. I'll post the link in the list of takers given below.
Naturally, the list has been seeded with a few friends (who are not co-authors) just to start the ball rolling. Incidentally, the seeds are guaranteed to have very cool sites, well worth a look.
