I provide a blogroll on my site as a courtesy to the people who linked to me. But if you want my real blogroll, visit Bloglines.

(Yikes, does that mean everybody who was linking to me will now unlink?)

Hi John,

Interesting you should mention the way long-time bloggers such as yourself are beginning to see the blogroll as obsoltete. Yet to newcomers, the blogroll is still very important. For many of us (I've been blogging since 11/04) it becomes a way of finding new voices.

The problem, though, is that many new bloggers feel obligated to link to A-listers. They don't think of getting that link from the A-lister, but of how they might be perceived by others in the blogosphere. Few have any idea that the link they provide is underscoring a power structure that may eventually keep their own voice from being heard. For those that don't care if they reach a wider audience, that's fine...but if they are writers, essayists or memoirists who are looking for a wider audience, at this point the chances of having their voices heard in the blogosphere is about the same as getting published.

My own entry on community and linking is here:

http://lovehopesexdreams.blogspot.com/2005/08/community-building-and-linking.html

The blogroll has certainly gotten a bad rap as of late. I don't think they are entirely worthless -- though they often are in practice. I've always to some extent seen a blogroll as a sort of "identification code" for a blogger. If you're an educated well read blogger, you can often deduce the exact industry a blogger works in by their blogroll, even if the blogger chooses to keep their profession secret. In addition to that, as cool as RSS is, and as much as we geeks like to use it, the fact is that the majority of the population doesn't care or want to know what "RSS" is, or what our hi-flutin' "XML" icons actually do (besides freak out their outdated, spyware ridden browsers).

So in summery, I still am keeping my blogroll because:
1. Bloglines is neither fast enough, nor easy enough to use to really be considered an effective method of sharing sources or links
2. Bloglines blogrolls are probably are a tad bit worse in, in terms of disorganization, and deadlinks.
3. Most of the population doesn't use RSS, and so by keeping my sources behind bloglines, I am in effect hiding them from everyone besides an elite.
4. It gives the reader a one glance overview of my interests, and sources of information
5. Provides a valuable resource to new readers.

Of course, if you don't maintain a blogroll, than these are all void reasons, and you might as well not have one. However, while its always up to the individual blogger, I don't think I'd go as far as to say blogrolls are obsolete, or dead -- at least, until bloglines becomes lightnening fast, and tightly integrated with firefox. And the rest of the population with "lives" gets on board the RSS fun train.