I STILL NEED YOUR LINKS!

I edit­ed my blogroll again this morn­ing. I’m treat­ing it as a more flu­id space until I can cat­e­go­rize these links on the links page prop­er. I’m try­ing to keep it live­ly so it’s just not a col­lec­tion of totemic links that you see on pret­ty much every blog in the known uni­verse. That prac­tice to me is a rel­ic of the days when one might try to ingra­ti­ate one­self to an edi­tor by read­ing their stuff reli­gious­ly. We’ve all done it, but it’s just silly.

There’s anoth­er rea­son I’m so adamant about this now. It’s the way of the Inter­net. Peo­ple used to treat their blogrolls like a new­stand to show off how var­ied their opin­ions were, or worse, to show­case well-con­nect­ed friends on the Inter­net. That too is sil­ly. If the blog is one of the basic units of social media, then it should be a social expe­ri­ence where every­thing is flu­id. Don’t just link to a blog out of oblig­a­tion! Tell us why you did it and why your read­ers should too.

This just isn’t about nudg­ing your online friends with memes; it should­n’t be cut­ting and past­ing a press release; it should be about hav­ing a con­ver­sa­tion with some­one and shar­ing it with every­one. It makes for a much rich­er expe­ri­ence and will like­ly fill in those writer­ly gaps we all strug­gle with when we sit down to blog. It does­n’t have to be so hard!

So here’s what I want from you: I’m look­ing for peo­ple who are writ­ing fre­quent­ly and engag­ing­ly on almost any­thing. Drop your sug­ges­tions in the com­ments box if you feel so moved to rep for your­self or some­one you’re read­ing. Keep in mind that I actu­al­ly sub­scribe to the blogs I list. It takes a vil­lage, right?