The demise of blogrolls? You can thank RSS
Duncan Riley asks an interesting question on The Inquisitr: what ever happened to blogrolls?
If you’ve been in or around the blogging game for awhile, you’ll understand what this question means. Blogrolls – a hand selected list of websites prominently displayed on a blog under some sort of “Blog Roll” or “Sites I Visit, You Should Too” heading – used to be pretty popular. They were a way for sites and publishers to further identify themselves. A liberal politics blog might have MyDD but certainly not have Powerline on its blogroll, for instance. Blogrolls were a way to extend respect and even some permanent link love to fellow bloggers as well. And of course the hope was that people will visit the sites that you blog rolled, increasing influence and popularity all around.
In thinking about how to answer Duncan’s question, I thought about how I used to use blogrolls. In fact, I realized, I used my own personal blogroll as a way to remember to visit the sites I enjoyed. It was a collection of bookmarks, essentially, that I had collected and published to my own website.
Then I thought about why I don’t need to do that anymore: RSS. RSS feeds allow me the luxury of housing all of the websites I enjoy in one place, while nicely keeping track of the stories I’ve already looked at and the ones I have not as yet. By subscribing to an RSS feed, I’m in a way extending some of the same respect that I used to in the past by including a link as part of a blogroll. And if publishers so desire, they can even include advertising as part of RSS feeds as a way to help pay some bills.
There are other reasons why blogrolls aren’t as popular these days. The rise of widgets and the greatly increased focus on jamming ads into every nook and cranny likely have had a role in squeezing out blogroll real estate.
But I do think that the rise of RSS has helped to contribute to the demise of blogrolls.
Not much doubt that RSS was a key contributor. So were other aggregators (Techmeme, Memeorandum, and the like).
I hadn't thought about the ad space issue but, yeah, that makes sense. It's probably at least part of the reason I AJAX'ed mine — so that I could put it back where readers would see it without sacrificing much sidebar space.
A relatively new blogger here, but as a marketer by trade I still see great value in the “links list,” blogroll, etc. on two fronts. First, as a way for bloggers to align themselves with like minded thinkers, in a way helping to define their goals by company they keep; and second as a way to guide readers to material they'll most likely appreciate. Readers can RSS once they find what they're looking for, but if you can get them there they will remember it.
I do think it needs to be considered on a case-by-case basis. If your audience isn't particularly tech savvy then a blogroll is probably still warranted.
This post was well timed. We were just discussing whether to add one to one of our blogs.
Besides, I'm hoping they become retro-kitsch soon. Like Guest books. Let's see some ironic guest books.
I really thought about adding Techmeme as a factor James as I use it as such an integral part of how I get my tech/webby news each day… you may be right about that.
Yeah, I think blogrolls will always be around in one form or another. I was interested in taking a look at why they went from something of a standard (in 2005 just about every blog worth its salt had an extensive one) to much more occasional.
It's totally up to every publisher. If you think it's useful, then go for it! The linkees will love it, love the shoutout and the link love and so forth.
And you're right, they may go retro-kitsch anytime now, maybe you'll help kick in the re-trend!