Joi Ito wonders today about the value of linking to thinks that seem to have already made the rounds. I’ve given some thought to this myself. On one hand, your readers aren’t going to appreciate coming to your site and seeing a bunch of links to stoires that they’ve already seen links to everywhere else. On the other hand, you can’t assume your readers read all the same sites you do. That’s a mistake that I’m prone to. Oftentimes readers send me links to things that I’ve seen a number of places, and which I didn’t link to simply because they already did seem overexposed. My general rule is to not link to stuff that’s really making the rounds unless I can say something original about it, or I can find background info about it that’s not getting any play elsewhere. If I do just want to link to something because I think that its overexposure does not outweigh its important, I try to make the item extremely short so those who have already seen it can blow past it quickly.