I'm a regular follower of the Adobe blog over at http://blogs.adobe.com/ and generally speaking I learn a lot (note I'm a passionate Adobe products user, particularly PhotoShop and Illustrator). Every once in a while they throw rocks towards Microsoft, and it does leave me with a bad taste. Case in point: In 'Why Apollo?' Andrew Shebanow writes...
"I normally don't like to do those "me too" sorts of posts Microsoft folks seem to specialize in, where you just say "look at this great article my coworker wrote". To me, its always seemed like a rather distasteful way to do PageRank/TechMeme manipulation."
As for me, when I link to another Microsoft employee blog it's because I found the information helpful or new. For example, Aaron Stebner recently posted Mailbag: How can I create a loading page for an MCML application? and I linked to it from our team platform blog here.
Why...?
- I didn't know Aaron was working on this, and thought it was quite neat, and that others would find it highly useful.
- I try to make it a point to aggregate all great technical docs in one place on our Windows Media Center Platform Team blog (makes search easier).
- There are bound to be folks who subscribe to our platform team blog but NOT Aarons blog -- they might not see this great resource unless I link.
Furthermore, I don't link to every one of Aarons posts (like this one, or that one or the one over here which is related to Windows Media Center development). For the most part, where and when I link is highly correlated to my opinion of the value of the material. It's not part of some uber conspiracy to manipulate the system. And I don't think most Microsoft bloggers link for the sake of linking.
Andrew, I don't think I would have discovered Why Apollo? or Mike Chambers had you not linked. That's exactly WHY you want to link -- to show your readers who you read, or listen to, or respect -- even if they happen to work for the same company you do.
I don't think it's distateful -- it's actually respectful in most cases.
Besides, you can always unsubscribe if you find the linking to be gratuitous.