Remember back in the halcyon days of the Web, when bloggers shared a sense of community with each other, linking back and forth to each other as a matter of social grace and conversation, as opposed to calculated consideration?

Well, if not, that's how it was back in 2003 or so, when I started blogging. Now, that signal (who linked to you recently) is gone, and honestly, not just for blogging. It's also gone for most of the Web. Of course, you can find it, if you want to geek out in your refer logs. But honestly, why have we buried it there?

The funny thing is, this is the very signal Larry Page was looking for when he came upon the idea for Google with Sergey. BackRub, remember?

I sense there's about to be some serious reconsideration of the value of declarative and transparent backlinks. I don't know why, but call it an itch I'm scratchin', rather like that of RSS....

All of this brought on by my continued and early explorations of Tumblr....

This post originally appeared at Searchblog and is republished here with permission.