Generally speaking you see blogrolls more often on niche, non-commercial blogs these days. It seems like blogs that make money, or hope to make money, do not have them. I would imagine this is because they are concerned that they would be assisting the competition. As far as a replacement to the blog roll (which is in effect an authoritative list of quality related blogs on a given topic), there is this new site called Regator.com that is doing that kind of thing. ;) Cheers mate! - Scott Lockhart
What was it about blogrolls that you feel is missing today? - Pat Hawks
Pat, it was a tool to say "I like you" to other blogs. If they liked you back, everyone won, but having said that this is back when there was 100,000 blogs on Technorati as well. I discovered, and sometimes got to know many interesting people via blog rolls. That comradarie isn't there in the same way any more - Duncan Riley
Wasn't blogroll the thing at the sidebar that was never working properly & responsible for a long time spent waiting for the page to be fully loaded? - Ton Zijp
Ton, not originally. They might have been later with some of the js embeds that came along, but the very original blogroll was hard coded a href links - Duncan Riley
People don't want to send folks away from their blog. They remove blog rolls to keep them on their site. Personally, I removed my blogroll and put my favorite sites/blogroll on my about page on http://onlyjames.com/ - James Mowery via twhirl
Good Point Duncan and thanks for reminding me that. While transitioning my blog from typepad to wordpress, somehow I dropped the blogroll. I guess that the part of the reason was that data did not get exported and i was careless. Blogroll will be back on my blog (http://startupnewz.com/blog) by next week. - Vic Podcaster
apologies for crowd sourcing half of this post to FriendFeed, but I just couldn't get Lively to work for me. I linked to everyone's FF profile, but at some stage we need to come up with defined attribution rules for posts that include FF. If anyone has an ideas let me know. - Duncan Riley
sergiooooooo, yes, if its a roll in your sidebar. They're not extinct, but they are rare these days. Sprague, good to see you're still keeping the spirit alive - Duncan Riley
I used to use one, but it seemed as soon as I'd update it, people would go inactive, or I'd have to change it again. (Examples: GeekWhat and Kent Newsome, both who just about fell off the map) Now, I think the Google Reader shared items blog gives a good enough clue as to what I read and find important. - Louis Gray
I found that no one ever clicked on them so I removed it. It was just noise. - Kevin
I'm on the same boat as Kevin. No one ever clicked on them so, I just got rid of it. I have a section for "friends" that include a couple of blogs but that's it. - Candace Holly
I have one on my dembot blog and really believe in it. - Andrew Baron
My blogroll would probably span a few screens.. Anyway blogroll feels slightly 1990s.. Don't you think so? - Winston Teo
Which reminds me, I need to update my blogroll. - J. Phil
Still maintain one but update it about once a month as things change - Charlie Anzman
I still use them, but only for close contacts. I like them. - Jim Kukral
I once used them, when Zeldman was that name in the bottom of every blogroll (go figure why ;-) ) and then I stopped blogging - directeur via NoiseRiver
In my opinion, the best use for a blogroll is for a _short_ list of _related_ blogs that the reader can hit in order to get more information on the topic. The "600 blogs I read every day" doesn't seem to me to be the best use of a blogroll. - possible248
I'm trying to convince myself to compile a decent blogroll since 2002:) - Federico Giacanelli
Perhaps it's time to convert the blogroll to a micro-blogroll. Better yet, I would like to display the people I find interesting (at friendfeed) as a widget. - Czar Derek Peterman
I recently dropped the blogroll on my blog. No one ever bothered clicking the links. What people do click are the links in my blog posts (yes, it does still happen). The blogs to which I link regularly in my blog posts are a much better barometer of the ones I follow than my blogroll ever was. I really didn't keep the blogroll up to date. - Hutch Carpenter
Hmm, regardless of clicks, SEO's understand that a blogroll link is a vote in Google, or at least indexing priority. If you really like someone, you'll tell Google about their blog by blogrolling them. I never nofollow those. - Brian Carter
Czar: How do you describe your "intersting" people at friendfeed? - directeur via NoiseRiver
I have it on good authority that a new blogroll widget is in the works that will bring blogrolls back - well at least with this crowd. I probably shouldn't say who and I don't know when, but it sounds like it will be dynamic and awesome. So don't count them out just yet - David Knight
My blogroll was too long for my sidebar, so I used to have a separate links page. I should clean it up and bring it back. Need to add a TON of social media bloggers I've been introduced to via FriendFeed these past few weeks. :D - Nathaniel Payne
are blogrolls that hump of cheese n the back of your fridge? :) - (jeff)isageek via fftogo
How about this for a theory: The blogroll has been superceded by Twitter and FriendFeed as the easiest way to track and associate oneself with others that are active, interesting and influential in social media - Daniel Young
It's crazy to me how many have dumped them when it's the first step in being social online if you have a blog... good for blogger to blogger luv and also good for pointing your visitors to additional related resources of value, so good all around. - Scott Bannon via twhirl
Duncan, this is so true. I was literally thinking late last night about doing a post on this as I was tidying up my own (relatively new) blog a bit and looking at the standard blogroll links that came with my Wordpress template. I had a quick look at a few fairly well-known blogs and there wasn't a blogroll in sight.. - Matt Hooper
Regarding the value of blogrolls for Google SEO. Check out this thread, about 3/4 the way down, for a comment on that by Adam Lasnik (Google search evangelist): "be careful about making assumptions on how Google does or will weight 'constant' links ;-" (http://friendfeed.com/e/7c7d98...) - Hutch Carpenter
I read blogs mostly in Google Reader. When I'm on a blog, I'm focused on the content rather than the sidebar. I like the blog roll concept, but it would reach a broader audience if it moved to the main column of content. For example, instead of showing a Last.fm widget in my sidebar, I automated a weekly post that shows my top artists from the prior week as a regular blog post. http://bit.ly/4rQvZU - Joe Lazarus
It's just normal Vista behavior... it seems like they want to warn me every time I open a non-microshaft program - Ross Miller
I'd like to thank Chris and Candace for saving me a lot of time, even though I'd never have played it for any longevity anyway. - Spinn
Candace, you sure about SL without furries, 2 of the 6 avatars its showing me look like furries - Duncan Riley
I really only saw "Human" avatars in the room I actually went in. I'm fairly sure it's Second Life lite. I need to go curl up in a ball for awhile. I feel like I felt after trying Second Life. - Candace Holly
experiment over, Lively under Fusion is a big fail. I get a screen, basic movements, but it's awful to use. Not sure if it's Fusion related or Lively just sucks...I think maybe Lively just sucks. - Duncan Riley
My vote is "lively sucks". I mean honestly, why would anyone who isn't a kid go into that mess? It's nothing that would remotely appeal to me. - Candace Holly
my vote too is that lively sucks. sure it'll get better but launching with something worse that 2nd life seems rather retarded... - tommy payne
added some links I'd missed on the first page + added others from FriendFeed. I'll be adding new pages shortly, but count most of these links as crowd sourced from FriendFeed followers. Some really interesting blogs here in the mix - Duncan Riley via Bookmarklet
Torrents are a god send here in Australia where we either don't get a show or it's 6 months after the US until we do get it. - Chris Dahl
It's probably helpful to think about what *isn't* on the air right now to explain why some shows are rising to the top. Like some of my favs, Dexter, House, Lost, 30 Rock, Boston Legal... I could go on! - Brooks Bishop
If I was a show runner, I'd be working out how to get my show on this list. - John Frost
This page is at least individually generated better than the other two (the signup screen and the profile page's right column). Mine is significantly different: http://www.flickr.com/photos/i... - Mark Trapp
lol - I read "iconic steve gillmor" & my 1st reaction was wtf :-p - mike "glemak" dunn
you get different than I do, brian is deserving - he's a good one - mike "glemak" dunn
Mark, I'm subscribing to most of the people in your pic, so that might have something to do with it. Combine our two pics and you'll have the top 20 of so recommended by FF - Duncan Riley
Still shows that FriendFeed is only attracting the 50k+ tech focused community. Will we all stop liking FriendFeed if/when the great masses start to use the service? - Jim McCusker
Great list, I highly recommend those folks too! - Susan Beebe
I highly recommend this recommendation. ;) - Brian Oberkirch
@Jim - I hope not.. I feel like some of the discovery/friends features will be enhanced by then, so I can still follow those that I am interested in, and ignore the boring people! :) - Tim Hoeck
I checked out my recommended list as well. A lot of folks there who barely register activity here. Not subscribing to them. Recommendations can be improved. - Hutch Carpenter
It's not like anybody uses Macs. Everybody uses IE on Vista... right? - Pat Hawks
But the good news is that its OK with FF ;0). Google is always tawdry in its approach to Macs. Picassa has been around for years and when I last looked it was XP/Vista only. - Mel.Buckpitt
AOL seems to be working on making a serious play in the market, between it's platform A, Bebo and "talks" with Yahoo! as well as the offer to pay top dollar for social networking ad CPM it seems like they are working on something. - gregory
@Gregory, agreed -- they definitely seem to have some sort of larger plan in mind. We're seeing all the little pieces being picked up week-by-week. It'll be interesting once we learn how they'll end up fitting together. - JR Raphael
@eric, yeah a strategy will have to exist. if their plan is just to copycat existing social networking sites and pull a microsoft (i.e. go after market share) they won't get very far. but if they can play the 'open' game (open source / open api etc) and bring something new and innovative to the market it *could* be very cool - gregory
