Extra! Extra newslinks!

With the proliferation of blogs and sites like Facebook connecting people all over the world, this generation has essentially let loose the floodgates of information.

Whether it's international news or a detailed profile of a random student you met on MySpace, there are few limits anymore as to what you can access.

I find it interesting that the Orlando Sentinel placed links on Facebook after the University of Central Florida ran out of water bottles at their very hot first game. Maybe it's a little unconventional to place a seemingly random link on a website parading cheesy online student clubs of all sorts. But the Sentinel writers new what they were doing when they placed a link to their article responding to the UCF water fiasco on the page of Facebook group "Knights for Free Water."

And why not? The paper was simply targeting and audience that would be interested in that particular story.

Bloggers essentially do the same thing, only they are not necessarily promoting themselves. They link to other new sites and provide a quick passage to other Web surfers. It's the internet version of magazines. Publications like Glamour and Sports Illustrated target to entirely different audiences. They are meant to appeal to a certain demographic--a certain gender, age group and social standing. These magazines promote themselves with covers displaying teasers of the content within.

Placing links to certain articles or news tidbits on related sites is essentially advertising like a magazine cover. It creates easier access to relevant information to people who care. Doing this is not only a smart move to improve readership, but it's also efficient.