No Blogroll
I’ve had a few requests recently to exchange links or to add people to my blogroll, its a way of giving a bit of kudos to people that you admire and whose work you read. The thing is, I don’t have a blogroll, and if I did I fear it would cause more problem than it solves. As a minimum, I’d need to consider:
- where to put it on the site, its already quite cluttered
- who should go on it
- how to maintain it to reflect my reading habits as they evolve – maybe a direct link to my feed reader?
- how do I prune it if it gets too big? Its like deleting friends from your phone but much much more public!
Its not that I don’t want to share some link love around either – there are many blogs I read that I’d like to own up to loving. Including (but not limited to) GirlsCantWhat, PHPWomen, Lig, Sara, Davey, Matthew, Jon, Ubuntu Tutorials, DevZone, Simon, DevChix and of course XKCD and Dilbert.
Is it a problem if I don’t have a blogroll? I quite like my site the way it is, I enjoy reading other people’s sites too and I share my appreciation usually through commenting. I’m not sure I should add something like this when I clearly don’t have the enthusiasm for it, what do you think?
I’m still waiting for a decent feed sharing application for Facebook. A few have come and gone, the one I’m currently using seems a bit flakey.
For sharing individual posts I’m still using the share option in Google Reader which creates a new feed for you to use elsewhere
i.e
http://www.google.com/reader/shared/13686849731198018525
I think a blogroll is only a good idea if you present an authoritive view on a theme or topic. i.e. as a reader you are the aggregator for others (see what Robert Scoble does).
Instead I think posting a link to your del.icio.us profile is more appropriate for a slightly less focused blog. You manage this anyway, and it supports RSS.
I was just about to suggest using/syndicating from delicious, and saw Mark beat me to it. I do something similar on my site, and have found delicious is not entirely reliable. So long as you’re prepared to cache the data, you should be fine.
Stephen: I’m not sure a feed from facebook would help – this site is my online home and if I remember to update facebook then cool but it can be time-consuming.
Mark and Geoff: it seems like great minds think alike! Clearly neither of you looked at my delicious account though because its full of complete randomness. I think I’d have to get a whole new one or something if I was going to put a feed on the site :)