Do Blogrolls Still Matter?

Back in the quaint beginnings of the blogosphere, blogrolls were a very big deal.  When I started ItSeemstoMe, I actually had the audacity to ask JD Lasica to list me on his blogroll, which he did, I suspect more out of pity than respect for my early contributions.

That was then.  This is now.  Back then, we were all struggling to discover new writers who appealed to each of us. It seems to me that now, we are each struggling to keep up with the overwhelming abundance of things we have discovered and enjoy, but don't have the time to loyally follow.

So the question is: Are blogrolls still relevant?  Do people still use them? Or is the lack of interest in them, just mine?

Comments

[Dave Taylor]

Great question, Shel. My take is that blogrolls aren't very interesting anymore because they typically are "rel=nofollow" so they don't let you help your friends and colleagues get "Google juice" (though not all are like that, I expect), they're often so darn exhaustive that they're basically like a wallpaper patter on the side :-) and they detract from the main content on the page, which is the core of the weblog in the first place. My $0.02, at least.

[Ernie]

I've stopped caring about blogrolls. I think those were a fad in the earlier stage of blogging. But then again, maybe it's something that newbie bloggers feel a need to do. And to some extent it does provide a sense of what constellation the particular blogger who posts them feels they are a part of. But, as for me, I'm kind of over the whole blogroll thing. If I were going to implement a blog list I'd use a del.icio.us tag and expedite the process and keep it fresh.

[Richard McKinnon]

Still useful, in a limited way. Scanning blogs you come across people in a roll you haven't heard of previously or perhaps hadn't considered in a certain light; ie this guys' good, so that's a third party validation for that blog on the roll, maybe I should try them. More importantly, it gives you a pointer to where a blogger sees themselves.

[/pd]

BlogRoll for me is just a safety net in case I get screwed in bloglines and lose my critical A list sites.

Ernie: If its del.icio.us or elsewhere, its still a roll of blogs in some form. The question here is why are we keep a list of blogs @ someplace.com ?? IMHO, I think that even the old bloggers keep these rolls for some reason. Is it a reference point/tag that they rely on ??

[Blaine Moore (Run to Win)]

I mostly ignore blogrolls and don't have any on my sites right now. I just link to relevant sites in my articles themselves.

[Evan Erwin]

I stopped bothering with them. I link to friends of mine, blogs I really enjoy. I don't list all of the blogs I read, and I rarely update the list I have. I don't think anyone, barring a script that does it for them, actually actively updates their links and keeps them current.

Blogrolls help with Technorati ranking (thank you wonderful peeps who link to my writing), but in the long run I pay far more attention and worth into sites you link to day-to-day. I then decide if I want to subscribe, then I keep those subscriptions to myself.

[Jeff Clavier]

Still relevant as the list of blogs you underwrite/recommend. Especially useful when they relate to industry specific ones, like my VC blogroll.