Why is my blogroll different from the blogs I read?
A lot of people try to match their blogroll to the list of blogs they regularly read, which makes a lot of sense. But I like to think of my blogroll as an entirely separate list of links - they are the blogs that I recommend to other people.
There’s a fairly subtle difference between the two concepts, and I get that there seems to be an inherent contradiction in recommending a blog that I don’t read, which is why it’s a lot more common to find a blog I read that isn’t on my blogroll.
This is because blog discovery is still in its very early stages.
I don’t think that search is going to be the mechanism for blog discovery. Search is a great tool for finding something you’re already looking for, but blogs are fundamentally nebulous, and it works a lot better to have a blog recommended to you than to go randomly searching for something with the right keywords.
This is why blogrolls are so important - because aside from the brand-new and amazing MyBlogLog Communities, they are the only real mechanism for sharing new blogs. Since recommendations are far more powerful if you give fewer of them (If someone comes across a blogroll with six blogs on it, they’re more inclined to look at them than if they come across a blogroll that lists 140 different sites), I keep my blogroll short and diverse.
This way, hopefully people will be encouraged to click out on my blogroll and find something new that they really like. And this is why my blogroll is different from “the blogs I read.”
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
You make many wise observations here about the much neglected blogroll and its real purposes. There is an art and science connected with the humble little blogroll that many users ignore.
Trust Linking is what I call it. As you state, it’s better to link from known, reputable, relevant, authoritative, or simply friendly “same wavelength” sources (blogs) to unknown sources (unfamiliar blogs).
Another factor is how the blogroll represents you. You as a person. Each item on it reflects your ethics, business acumen, skills levels, wide area knowledge acquisition (C. Locke), and net gain interlinking web expertise (J. Hagel III).
You can add prestige to your entire blog by listing certain sites, for example, Tom Peters, Seth’s Blog, BusinessWeek Blogspotting, Jakob Nielsen, Fortune Innovation, Laura Ries, Slashdot, SourceForge, Scobleizer, and this blog.
So credibility is enhanced by blogroll assembly strategy.
If a blog on a topic I know well, like web usability, doesn’t have sites like Use It, Peter Merholz, Jared Spool, Joel Spolsky, etc. in it, I have to wonder how smart this blogger is.
So don’t forget the important value of perceived expertise and credibility that is one purpose of a blogroll.
And finally, the Pre Surfed Web concept of a blogroll. Evan Williams called it “blogrolls: the new RSS”. I use my own blog’s blogroll as a portal to other blogs I need to study and learn from.
Be sure to click through your whole blogroll twice a year, to make sure the blogs still are being maintained and updated, and to make sure they have not deviated from your trust and expectations of a resource to recommend to your audience.
Thank you for the “amazing.” Let us know if we can assist you in assemblying a BB summit community for between the events.
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