The Problem with Link Blogs (Plus Five Link Blogs that Rock)

Jens Meiert, April 6, 2007 / March 25, 2008.

This entry is filed under Uncategorized.

Link blogs suck because they don’t provide any content. Link blogs suck because they just jump on the back of people who actually create content – with few exceptions. Link blogs nonetheless play an important role in the hypertext ecosystem by mixing and working up entire informations spaces, bringing good stuff (back) to the surface. And thus, every content provider’s certainly happy about link blogs, as must be search engines for getting more votes for relevant documents.

Link Blog Schizophrenia

So what am I talking about (while I’m entirely ignoring those spam link blogs)? I merely want to point out two things, as described above anyway:

On the one hand you may define link blogs as blogs that most of the time publish rather short posts like “hey, check this out, click here” or “look what’s up here, I fully agree” and that – you name it – include a link to the actual resource (outside the respective blog). (Bonus: The best link blogs contain tons of “yah that also helped me” comments, too.) Since link blogs are gregarious animals in most people’s feed readers, covered by dozens of other sources where you already heard about the document in question, link blogs usually are a waste of time for both authors and visitors.
On the other hand, link blogs are helpful for prioritizing and distributing content, and thus they definitely are important anyway. Link blogs can (but this is rare) actually help in finding the best content, while becoming an important place to go for certain topics. But this really is so rare compared to the sheer amount of link blogs that at least I already had a hard time to figure out five good (yet outstanding) link blogs, shown below.

Improving Link Blogs

One thing may actually help to improve a link blog: Increasing the post text to link ratio, meaning that there must be more “transfer”, more input from the author. (Some authors already manage that – surely much better than me when merely posting links – but it’s meant as a general note.)

Exceptions Prove the Rule …

Finally, here are the five blogs that I consider link blogs and that definitely proved valuable:

InfoDesign. Hammers out design, usability, user experience, and information architecture related posts that would otherwise rather keep out of sight.
Max Design or rather their links for light reading. Struggled with claiming that this is a link blog, but refering to the “links for light reading”, it is. Must-subscribe collection of mostly web development related links, great backup for your overview on current development.
Bruce Schneier. Security “guru” with a high level rhythm of security and security technology related link posts to articles, studies, whatever. If you don’t want to dig deep into security, this is a great (link) blog.
Boing Boing: Classic! Boing Boing really built an excellent link blog, garnished with own and reader views. Above all, the content being picked definitely makes Boing Boing a “directory of wonderful things”.
Einfach für Alle (German). Best German link blog on accessibility and web development. Short posts, but to the point and generally linking to content of major quality.

While this is yet another “guerrilla rant post” … what’s your opinion? Likewise, what are your favorite link blogs?

Enjoy some popular posts, probably including contemporaries:

Comments

On April 6, 16:49 CEST, Jens Grochtdreis said:

Sorry, but this rant is pure (edited). Linkblogs are as good and bad as blogs with long or short postings. As there are many really good blogs on this planet it is nearly impossible to catch all good postings all by yourself. How should you know? So I am happy to see postings with links to good readings. Maybe someday there’ll be a link to your blog, too.

Linkblogs - as you call them - do something very important: they reduce the complexity of the blogosphere and they don’t claim to have the smartest ideas themselves but they link to good postings.

After reading this rant I don’t understand your point. You hate linkblogs but on the other hand name exceptions that provide quite a huge amount of links. So what’s the beef? Were you just in a bad mood?

Well, I prefer good linkblogs over such rants.
On April 6, 19:20 CEST, Jens Meiert said:

Be careful with your words.

And better start over again, I think I made it clear that there are yet great link blogs though this is quite rare. I also expressed that link blogs are valuable, too, no question indeed. But (and that’s a big but, right), there are so many link blogs pointing all to the same resources without adding much value that it hurts. Doesn’t matter that the people just mean it good, I don’t question that at all, and we all surely appreciate that.

And there’s news: Link blogs by no means “reduce the complexity of the blogosphere”, quite the contrary, they in fact clutter it. (Saying this without judging it, the entire problem’s interesting.)
On April 8, 9:55 CEST, Keegan said:

Understand your point. Almost agreed. Link blogs as you call them might be useful but rather become bothering. Fair enough.
On April 9, 9:05 CEST, james kingsted said:

I see you point link blogs aren’t really that helpful, their is the exception to the rule but most of these blogs aren’t useful! I do agree with you that it would help if they did increase their post text to link ratio. I mean come on would it hurt them to just say something. but if they point to good resources then I guess I can forgive them a little. maybe just a little!

Jens Meiert