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Dec
19
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Last week Yahoo! announced the release of the Shortcuts Plug-in for Wordpress which will automatically offer relevant popups to Yahoo related resources such as maps, Yahoo! Shopping and Flickr among others. As the publisher, you have the ability to choose which links you use and which you don’t. I can see this being helpful in some cases, such as linking to information on a company’s stock, an obscure location or a word you think you’re audience doesn’t know.
However, I don’t think that truly creative bloggers who frequently link out from their posts should use this tool much, if at all. One of my favorite things about Lisa Barone’s posts, other than her writing style of course, is her creative linking. If I don’t have time to read her entire post I like to scan her link text for a laugh or two. People using the Yahoo! Shortcuts tool may get lazy and resort to referencing exactly what the other gazillion people who inevitably typed the same word referenced.
Naturally, my question is when advertisers will be able to start paying for placement on keywords of their choice in Shortcuts or buy advertising inside the Shortcuts popups, making this another way to monetize your blog.
I will probably download the plug-in to test and keep an eye on it, but since I prefer writers who put a little thought into their links, I can only return the favor by not taking too many “Shortcuts”.