Links are the essence of the web. They create conversations in the blogosphere and define relevance in search.

Links are changing the way people write and probably the way they think too– a world with content but no links is like a world with noun but no verbs.

Linking is so important that blogging tools like ecto or performancing provide numerous tools for creating links based on the browsing history, search results, flickr photos, and so forth.

What does all of this have to do with email clients? Today, very little, and that’s my point. Outlook, Thunderbird, GMail and every other email client I’ve tried, whether web or PC based, has only the most rudimentary tools for creating and importing hyperlinks.

If linking to the web is difficult in email, it’s even more difficult to link to other email messages. The reply thread is a primitive kind of linking, but just try referencing two different email threads in a message.  This is a real shame, because especially in business communication, links are extremely useful for providing data and background for the points in the email.

Email clients should make it at least as easy as blogging clients to create links based on where you’ve been, the results of a keyword search, feeds, and data in the corporate intranet.

Increasing the quantity and quality of linking in the intranet, and providing the ability to search over those links, would allow Google-like relevance algorithms to be applied to intranet pages. Then maybe we’ll be able to find relevant information as easily in our little intranets as we do on the internet at large.