The Good Old Blogroll, Episode I
Permit me the role of old fart for a moment. I remember the days when the web was small. A time when we needed a breadcrumb trail to find our way around. Before the web was indexed, there was the “blogroll”. A sidebar list most sites included that pointed to other, similar or familiar Web sites.
I rather miss the blogroll. It was a way to find interesting new sites recommended by people that I already liked. To a small extent, the current linked-list format has replaced the blogroll. People link to an interesting article somewhere and forward visitors there. But this is not the same as a blogroll. Linking to one article is not an endorsement of the site. In fact, often a link is intended as sarcasm. “Look at this dumb statement” or “Can you believe this B.S.?” The blogroll was an endorsement of the person or site as a whole. It was a way to say “hey, this is a site that I identify with and if you like my stuff, you’ll like this too.”
The days of the blogroll are gone. The web is too big now. I could easily link a hundred sites that are similar to mine. The are a thousand sites that I like and million sites talking about the same things I do. Every once in awhile, though, there are a few sites that make it into my RSS feeds and percolate through to my daily reads.
So, here are a few sites that have made it into my RSS feeds recently. If you like my site, you will probably like theirs. This is an endorsement. Sharing is caring.
I will attempt to make this a reoccurring series. Just follow the tag “Blogroll” in the future to find them all.