Here's an example of an online news site that doesn't quite get this whole web thing. The Web Host Internet Review is a daily news site covering the web hosting industry. Today, they picked up on a news story I wrote yesterday about Amazon.com's new EC2 transactional web hosting service, and cited Technology Evangelist in their article.

Notice the links in the above paragraph? I referenced two articles, thus linked to two other articles. Why did I link to them? Because I thought they may be relevant to you, the reader. I do this because you may want to read the original source rather than only my coverage of the story.

However, when the Web Host Internet Review ran their story citing an article on this site (link provided above) they didn't  link to us. I brought this to their attention and they still didn't do it.

Strangely, they did link to Amazon from their news story, but not to the section of Amazon's massive site that was actually relevant to the article.

Is this a case of trying to keep readers locked in? I can't say. Their motivations are not clear to me. However, it is clear to me that they understand the value of links since they emailed me to let me know there were writing an article about my article. In that email, they noted: "Feel free to add this URL to your press and media area on your website."

So here is my mention of their coverage.

Would this story be more or less valuable without the links? I think the answer is pretty clear.

Update: thewhir.com got around to adding the link 3 days after publishing their news story.