So if links are dead, why all the traffic?

Just trying to figure this out.  Steve Gillmor has been talking about the fact that links are dead for while now on his podcast (along with Office being dead…which is a whole other post).  It seemed to make sense to me until yesterday.  Until then I was looking at it from an information consumers standpoint.  If I was reading a blog and there was something interesting to me referenced, it was easy enough to use the built in search box in firefox and get to a drill down on that topic (through google, technorati, etc…whichever was appropriate for what I was looking for).

Here’s my new question though: I agree that links don’t matter for consumers, but after yesterday I am starting to think they do matter for authors.  As I posted yesterday, I tried Dave Winder’s new moblogging service.  I have been following his posts on trying to blog from his blackberry for a while since I have been wanting a better way to blog from my T-mobile MDA (aka the HTC Wizard).  When her released yomblog yesterday, I tried it straight away and I guess I was one of the first because Dave linked to me on his blog.

Here’s the results:

I had been cruising along at 10 visits per day for almost a month.  A few readers, but certainly not anything to write home about.  With one link, my daily visits jumped almost 30x.  That link from Dave got people to pay attention (however briefly) to what I had to say.  Maybe they’ll come back…maybe they won’t.  But I wonder if the result would have been any where close if I had just got a mention rather than a link?

What do you all think (if there is anybody that actually stuck around from yesterday?).  Are links still relevant to discover new content, or are they dead for any and all purposes?