Duncan Riley asks; What's happened to the blogroll?
I have also noticed that bloggers are dropping their blogroll.
Here are my thoughts on why this might be:
- The blogroll has been superceded by Twitter and FriendFeed as the easiest and most information rich method of tracking and associating oneself with others that are active, interesting and influential in social media
- Blogrolls were removed because they made it too easy for PR firms and marketers to identify bloggers and networks of bloggers. This means that those that want to influence bloggers actually have to participate. The blogroll in this context is the equivalent of an organisation publicising its top tier media list.
- Blogrolls are simply too hard to maintain.
- Blogrolls drive traffic away from people's blogs.
I'd say that number 1 seems to be the most likely but it's interesting that this trend has just occurred.
There doesn't seem to have been an anti-blogroll conspiracy, as such.
Daniel Young, PR consultant, writes on the impact of new technology and the Internet on PR and corporate communications. Daniel is based in Australia.