Anne 2.0 has a very organized approach to how she reads and organizes other blogs she reads, and I think I'm following her when I summarize that her blogroll is a subset or byproduct of bloggers whose feeds she subscribes to, or at least they are related and organized in relation to her subscribed-to feeds.
Shelley thinks blogrolls are evil and divisive and points to the overstated, self-anointed Women's Media Center as living proof.
I say that my blogroll is neither related to my RSS subscriptions nor to do I consider the folks on it the 'who's-who' of blogging. They are simply this: other blogs I don't ever want to forget to read, and, through the marvels of blogrolling.com, a little asterisk even tells me when there's new stuff to posted there. How Web 2.0! Except it all happened a year or two ago.
I think Anne's relationship between her feeds and her blogroll is interesting because it sounds like RSS came first for her, then a blogroll. On the other hand, my blogroll is O-L-D, predating both RSS and jumping up and down by a couple of years. In that way, it actually bears little resemblance to the feeds in my aggregator. I use my RSS feeds to subscribe to information sources - searches on technorati, client-related sources, and a few blogs I read every day without fail. But it's not the same as my blogroll.
I view bloglines as a tool; I look at my blogroll as my way around.
I'm always disappointed when I'm done with my RSS feeds--when there's nothing left bolded. But that disappointment lasts for just a couple of seconds and it's off to my blogroll to see who's been up to what. I'm even happy when I click on sites who've moved. I do the lazy thing. I go back to the old blog and follow the usual final-posting link to the new blog. I make a mental note, JENEANE you've GOT to update that link, and then I forget, and I take the same trip back to them the next time.
You guys are right, I do have to clean my blogroll up. I know some people have two or three links. But every time I see that, I remember how i REFOUND them after not reading them for a long time and added them only to go--HEY I added them AGAIN. Cool. yah well. blogging's messy sometimes.
GOOD.
My blogroll is not an information repository or a library of links. It's my little scroogle map to places I never want to forget my way to. I may take out my triptick once a week, once a month, or once an hour. But I wouldn't get rid of it, and i want to show YOU the way to some of these fine places too. You may go. You may not. You may just add them to your own map to parts unknown.
I will tell you one thing--I refuse to view bloglife through an aggregator. It doesn't excite me. It's a great way to have information delivered. It's a suckass way to experience the Internet.
For that I hop from site to site, and I use my blogroll and other people's blogrolls (Doc's and Frank's are great) to do that.
Divisive? naw. Evil? double naw. Now go do it.
