Linkstorm is the reborn Content Directions, a company which struggled along with others to breathe life into the Digital Object Identifier as an industry-standard persistent link reference but found more interesting opportunities in the features that could be built off DOI infrastructure. The Linkstorm version of the company is focused on two key opportunities: providing value to links in advertising and in editorial content. It's a concept that has been picked up by Reed Business Information for online global news from their Flight publication, a major victory for Linkstorm beyond their initial base of directory clients, as noted in their announcement. Hovering your screen cursor over a Linkstorm link exposes a tiered directory of navigation options, which could include both related content and options such as purchasing, emailing or embedding Linkstorm-enabled links in your own Web site for an article (example article here - hover over the headline).

The result is a system that allows publishers and advertisers to create contextual navigation not only to related content but to related functions that can enhance the value of an ad or article significantly. Instead of thinking about how to get someone from whatever page a link leads to in an ad or headline to the content that's most attuned to their immediate needs, Linkstorm links provide a method of self-determined navigation that allows users to bypass precious seconds in search of what will really motivate their interests - without giving up valuable screen "real estate." Still missing from the Reed Business implementation is how to identify to users the availability of this navigation: the Linkstorm links appear as normal navigation elements until you happen to cursor over them. Linkstorm has a suggested icon to use to identify their special links, but it's not used in this instance.

Linkstorm offers a very valuable navigation tool that allows the content itself to navigate audiences to more refined interests - a great example of how to leverage the context of content in powerful ways. In doing so we need to think more carefully about how we use available space in an online page to provide these kinds of experiences and make both publications and ads more interactive navigation experiences. Linkstorm may not be the definitive answer to navigation issues, but it raises many powerful opportunities to explore in the meantime.