Bye bye blogroll
August 31 2010
It's been a long time since I thought about my blogroll or, for that matter, really paid attention to anyone else's. I find blogs today through PlanetLotus (and there are a number of new ones found there), Google alerts, Twitter and Facebook links, and our internal implementation of Lotus Connections. So, rather than inadvertently offend someone not included, or consider whether the links there are still relevant, I've blown it away. I put it on a hidden page for now, and suppose I can resurface it if I get a lot of negatives on this, but the Twitter feedback was neutral to positive so, it's gone.
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- 2
Gavin Bollard http://dominogavin.blogspot.com | 8/31/2010 10:01:27 PM
Google reader works for me too. I prefer to be in command of who I follow.
The recent debacle on PlanetLotus over a certain member who kept posting about a certain MS product springs to mind.
If you don't like what's being written, it's simple enough to remove the RSS feed - and this rewards those who post vs those who don't.
Even better, it keeps posts on topic (one of the reasons why I removed all my non-computing interests from my blog years ago).
- 3
Karen Demerly | 9/1/2010 7:52:52 AM
Picturing the SNL airline skit, as the bloggers on your roll leave your page, "Buh-bye. Bye now. Bye. Bye. Buh-bye..."
- 4
David (The Notes Guy in Seattle) | 9/1/2010 9:39:35 AM
Then I won't be offended if you don't add my blog to the list, though I hope you will at least read it for a fresh perspective of Lotus Notes from Microsoft land. ;-)
- 5
Lisa Duke http://www.simplified-tech.com | 9/1/2010 10:09:28 AM
I think the change makes sense - Darren's done the same thing and just has a link to Planet Lotus.
Of course, I do think he likes seeing his name on THE Ed Brill's blog when he logs in. Maybe you could just include a link to his blog in every posting? ;)
- 6
Gregg Eldred http://www.ns-tech.com/blog/geldred.nsf | 9/1/2010 2:26:33 PM
I've struggled with this quite a few times and each decided to keep the blogroll. Mainly because I believe that there are quite a few people who do not know about PlanetLotus, RSS, or any of the excellent RSS readers.
That, and I like to yell at the kids that dare step on my lawn. :-)
- 7
Stuart McIntyre http://blog.collaborationmatters.com | 9/1/2010 4:31:27 PM
Personally, it deeply upset me every time I browsed edbrill.com and saw that you had failed to keep up with the launch of my 17th and 18th blog sites, so good riddance to the Blogroll!
- 8
Charles Robinson http://www.cubert.net | 9/1/2010 4:40:50 PM
It saves me from having to ask you to remove me, so I say good riddance. :-)
- 9
Darren Duke http://blog.darrenduke.net | 9/1/2010 10:49:07 PM
@5, I do, I do....oh, wait....I did, I did.
@7, I'm pretty sure Ed dropped the Blog Roll because of Stuart's constant barrage of emails..."Ed, can you please add 'The Northstar blog' oh, and 'The Polar Bear blog' to you blog roll". I think that turned into a full time job for Ed ;)
- 10
Stuart McIntyre http://blog.collaborationmatters.com | 9/2/2010 6:16:51 AM
@9 I don't envy Yancy Lent his task with Planet Lotus for just that reason!
- 11
Christopher Byrne http://www.eyeonsportsmedia.com | 9/2/2010 1:32:57 PM
I think you are missing the bigger benefit of keeping the blogroll: it helps build the google rank for other bloggers because Google sees it as inbound links. Taking the blogroll off theoretically lowers other sites' google page ranks.
- 12
Stuart McIntyre http://blog.collaborationmatters.com | 9/3/2010 4:06:56 AM
@11 I'm not sure that Google's pagerank algorithm is really that simplistic these days, else it would be far to easy to game by spammers and domain sitters.
- 13
Chris Miller http://www.IdoNotes.com | 9/4/2010 12:32:29 AM
I use the RSS reader and made it easy a while ago for everyone. You can simply grab the full PlanetLotus blogger list as OPML and import right into Google Reader (and then use Feedly)
{ Link }
- 14
jeff http://www.piff.co | 9/21/2010 10:36:27 AM
I used the blogroll a long time ago and didnt see any benefits with the constant checking up on other backlinks.
As a daily user of Google Reader, I long ago added a shared items widget to my blog, so if I spot something that I think my readers are also likely to find interesting, I can add a link to it to the sidebar of my blog with a single click (or Shift+S) right from within the article I'm reading. I've found that to be much more useful than my old blogroll, because it's specific items that are interesting to me right now, not a whole blog that I found interesting years ago but may or may not have added anything useful since it originally caught my eye.