Remember blogrolls? Those annoying lists of me-too sites that used to be a staple of every blog?
They are so yesterday, and here’s why …
- Too many! too many!
Anyone who does anything in the blogosphere reads way too many blogs to list them all in the blogroll on their sidebar. Even when you use Blogrolling. - It’s all just politics, anyways
Ummm … how many people have BoingBoing in their blogroll? Seth Godin? Guy Kawasaki? Enough already – be a little original. There’s millions of blogs, and at least tens of thousands of really good blogs. Find some! - Put it in the posts
Find something cool? Post about it. Find something else cool for tomorrow. And next week. And next month. If you really need to keep track of something (yeah I like Seth Godin too) use RSS. That’s what it’s for. - You need less of more
Your blog has 5 million doo-dads hanging of the left sidebar, right sidebar, topbar, bottom bar … you name it. I know – I just redid my blog theme and killed about three quarters of what I had. Clean house. Leave what’s important. Kill what’s peripheral. - Purposelessness is bad
What’s really the point of blogrolls, anyways? Are you actually going to go there to click on the links to sites you like – not likely. So what are you trying to do with it? Unless it advances your blogging goals, it’s crud. Crud inhibits your progression. Scrub it.
Are all blogrolls in all cases bad? Of course not. Are most of them? Definitely.
Decide which yours is, and act accordingly.
[tags] blogroll, blogging, blogrolling, john koetsier [/tags]
Have just installed a grazr page instead of the linkroll.
(a) it’s actually useful to me and my visitors.
(b) it contains a lot more than a linkroll
(c) it can contain a lot more links than I’d ever put in a linkroll
But…
Equally hard to keep up to date… 🙁
Still not quite there, but I think it’s better.
Call me 2002ish. I love blogrolls.
OK, fine. Stick me in yours (joking).
Seriously, I prefer del.icio.us as a way of understanding what a person is surfing/reading lately.
John… I’ve added you to my blogroll. Now, I’m off to del.icio.us to update my subscriptions…
I use my blogrolls to offer the folks that come to my site for an alternative to just me blah-blah-blahing. It’s also a nice bit of Technorati-juice as each time I post, it shows up as a fresh post with my blogroll right there. Also, keep in mind many people are not web 2.0 savvy, and barely know about blogs, much less del.icio.us, rollyo, technorati, or any of the other social networking/blog aggregating services, so people enjoy seeing other links that are categorized by area of interest that align with what I discuss on my blog. To most, I just invite them to my “website” and I tell them all the best links can be found off of there.
Now if I were thinking of how does a blogroll help me, other than the occasional person who feels guilty and adds a blogroll link back to me, it really doesn’t…except the karma I get from sharing some link love is priceless!
In short, I love blogrolls. 🙂