I have a confession to make: for a few weeks I kind of forgot to have a blogroll here at Broadcasting Brain.
It may actually have been closer to two months. Oops. This may indicate a larger concern worth discussing.
I have become largely immune or resistant to blogrolls, those links on a blog’s sidebar where a blogger shows ongoing support and appreciation for one or more other bloggers. It took a thought-provoking post by Mitch Joel, one of the hardest working guys out there in social media, to bring that back to my attention.
His post “I’ll Tweet That” Is The Ultimate Insult discussed the ways in which some Twitter users may be using Twitter as a quick and dirty way to show a bit of favor or compliment towards someone by Tweeting their name, blog URL, or other relevant details. Prior to microblogging’s surge, people would direct attention through other means. Two of the more permanent means of guiding people towards quality material – that act being the highest compliment you can pay online – were through links inside posts or on the blogroll.
Mitch describes this as follows:
So, what’s the ultimate compliment?
It would seem like the value of a Blog post has increased which would make the value of a Blogroll link that much more impressive. If someone tweets about something you did, what they’re really saying is, “this is ok. OK enough for me to put my name on it, but if I really loved it, I would Blog about it, record a video about you, etc…” A tweet does drive traffic, but it’s nothing like a Blog post or a position on a Blogroll. Those are becoming increasingly harder to get and must be earned. That being said, if the content of the tweet has any real merit, people will retweet it which can – to a lesser degree – drive an immediate surge of traffic. My guess would be that the half-life of that is significantly less than the power of a formal (and permanent) Blog post.
I think this is an important point. Tweets are temporary, unless someone finds them again through Twitter Search or a Google search. A place on the blogroll of a respected blog or within a popular blog post can have a kind of longevity that tends to ellude 140 chr. bursts of… something.
Here’s the thing, though: how often do people actually go through blogrolls to check them out?
I don’t very often. Plus, if I’m visiting an established blog, I very rarely check the blogroll more than once. I block it out. Great new stuff could come along and I’d miss it because I’ve already looked at it once.
Here’s the other killer: if you read most of your blogs by RSS reader, like I do, then you’ll never even see the blogroll.
I think that placing a link in a blogroll used to be the ultimate sign of respect. However, as many of us continue to get our information through RSS readers and other aggregators, we miss many of the Web page elements that we used to see unless we click through (and how often does that really happen?) Plus our sidebars are becoming buried in widgets that, in some cases (e.g. Top Commentators, MyBlogLog Community, etc.) have usurped much of the role of the Blogroll.
Perhaps the blogroll is dying. But will it be replaced by something else? And have the changes in blogging and Web 2.0 technologies encouraged habits that will make the blogroll a relic of the past?
What do you think?
It's definitely lost its power for the reasons you mention like linking to Twitter and sharing feeds. Another reason why it has lost it's power is because of the buddy-blogger-link exchange-thing. Readers learned to ignore that part of the sidebar because it got too cumbersome. I still like the idea though, but that's because I'm kind of “old school”.
I'm going to try to be more conscious of blogrolls for the next little while – it's unfortunate that sometimes they fall into that gray area of perception that we tend to block out (e.g. ads)
I'm in the process of creating a blogroll, but not for the sidebar. Rather as a top navigational link.
Won't that still encounter the same problems, though?
Excellent point, and it makes a larger point about the use of social media as a whole. For too many people, SM have become an objective, not a tool. We want a blog because “that's what people are doing now” not because we can articulate what we want to do with it.
The blogroll is one of those things that became like your appendix; maybe necessary at one time, but perhaps evolution has caused its usefulness to pass?
–Mike
Maybe, but a blogroll is a lot easier to remove than an appendix.
A blogroll as a social tool may be being replaced – but as a list of resources and other things your readers might like I don't think it will go away. I may not click through to a blog very often, but when I do I really appreciate seeing suggestions from the blogger of where else I might like to go. I prefer it when the list is short and relevant or when it's broken into categories. Mine is set up with annotations and reached through a navigation link. It does need to be updated though…
Agreed on the ongoing need for resources, etc.
Another thought might be to set it up like Facebook … instead of your entire blogroll, you have a list of “3 other blogs I enjoy” and every time you refresh the page 3 new random blogs show up from your blogroll.
The up-side for those ON your BR is that they are more likely to actually get a referral from your website. For you, you save the space and build even better relationships with your BR-ers because you have figure out a way to ACTUALLY push some traffic their way.
Like so many other times, if we take a little time to ask ourselves, “Blogrolls … what problem are we really trying to solve here?” some interesting answers come about.
–Mike
It's an interesting discussion. Someone just reviewed my blog and one of his comments was that I had too many links on my blog roll! I've got over 200 links to blogs and other resources that I think people might be interested in when they visit my blog.
I review my blog roll on a fairly regular basis, and I'm sure there are a few there that need purging, but I think they are all valid links. I subscribe to most of the blogs on my blog roll, but not all.
I'd guess about half my readers get the posts via RSS, but the other half come from search engines and they will be seeing the blog roll, so I think it's a very important resource and I won't be cutting down on the number of entries.
If anything I plan to add even more blogs as I find them.
200 does seem like a lot, but whatever works for you.