Blogroll – Andy writes!

While doing some blog housekeeping this week, I decided to weed out a raft of blogs in the higher ed category of my blogroll. Gone from the roll are those higher ed blogs that were either extremely stale (no posts since 2009 or earlier) or missing in action.

These blogs have been purged. May they rest in peace:

http://www.admissionary.com/

http://emerille.wordpress.com/

http://radio-weblogs.com/0114870/

http://mattherzberger.com/

http://inspiredannualgiving.com/

http://imhe.blogspot.com/

http://www.karlynmorissette.com/

http://www.omnivore.us/blog/

http://www.professional-lurker.com/

http://www.steincommunications.com/thescoop/

http://ublog.usphere.com/

http://ubrander.wordpress.com/

http://mchron.net/site/edublog.php

http://zenwrites.com/blog

I hated to let some of them go, because they were fine blogs in their day. But if they’ve been abandoned by their creators, why should I attempt to keep them on life support?

P.S. – If you are the owner of one of these blogs and you do start posting again, please let me know so I can resurrect your link on the blogroll.

P.P.S. – While housecleaning, I added four other noteworthy blogs to the higher ed blogroll: EMG’s Brand Manager’s Notebook, Ron Bronson’s edustir, Dave Olsen’s Mobile in Higher Ed blog and Rachel Reuben‘s blog.

P.P.P.S. – I know I also need to prune the other blogroll categories. (One of these days.)

Dear Blogroll:

I’ve been neglecting you. I know this. I haven’t updated you in ages, and some of the sites you contain are defunct or nearly so. I rarely even click on any of your sites anymore, even though you include some of my favorite reads. I’m just not that into you these days. The thrill is gone. I’m sorry.

There was a time, of course, when I visited you daily — hourly, even, on some days. But that was before I started using RSS heavily. Google Reader made it so easy to subscribe to blogs, news sites and other information sources. Rather than go to individual sites, one at a time, the latest posts from those sites would come to me, right there in my iGoogle dashboard.

With RSS, I can swiftly plow through the feeds of hundreds of sites, star those that I like and share others with fellow Google Reader users. I can even share those items right here on this blog. (See that box way up there above you, blogroll? Up above the Twitter feed, the comments widget and the feed from BlogHighEd? Yeah, that’s my shared items widget. Oh, dear blogroll, how far you have fallen.)

And then came Twitter. Oh, Twitter! Where the stream of links flows free, pre-screened, recommended and retweeted by hundreds of my closest online friends. It’s a constant stream of information from which I can drink at any time of day. It never ends.

So, dear blogroll, it seems your time has past.

But I just can’t bear to part with you. We’ve had some good times together, and there is much about you that I still like.

I guess you can stay, for old time’s sake. Just don’t get the wrong idea.

P.S. – OK, blogroll. One quick update, but that’s IT! I just got word that Liz Allen now has a blog — called Adaptivate. I’m adding it right now.