I just read AOL is entering the blogging fray with AOL Journals. Jeff Jarvis shares his take on AOL's attempt to hook up members with the rest of the blogging world. Two points stand out in his discussion. The first would be the immense potential of AOL's membership base. Jeff pointed out that AOL's 34 million or so members would bring in a bigger audience to the greater blogdom. They would also have the potential to generate a lot of material to link to. As Jeff points out, what you blog isn't content until it's linked to. the more bloggers, the more blogs we can link to. It also means there'll be more that'll link back to us. That would be good for all bloggers, irrespective of affiliation. Pretty rational argument, if you asked me.

Second, the issue of linking to content. I once had a problem linking to a Time.com article I was referring to. I was prompted that I would have to buy the article. Why would I want to pay for it when I'm practically advertising them for free by linking to their article? Well, I found a way to do it (link, not pay). I accidentally discovered it when I did a search using Google for similar articles. Voila! I was able to link to the very same Time.com article for free. Apparently, you can Google your way into articles from Time, Washington Post and The New York Times without subscribing to them. Jeff is right in saying that AOL should allow its members to have a similar backdoor that people on the Internet could access. If they could link AOL's "exclusive" content to the world outside, it would be an immense contribution to all bloggers. Bottomline: More resources (stuff, sites, content, what have you...) to share and to behold.