In mid-March 2024, Dave Winer rolled out a new feature on Scripting News – a blogroll with dynamic content. I think it is interesting, but it is more than a “traditional” blogroll, in that it is not just a list of sites, but is presenting content from those sites, and ordering them in terms of the sites most recently updated at the top of the list. Blogrolls of the past were a static list of sites. In his podcast announcing the rollout, Dave Winer comments that future development directions will be up to users (about 8 minutes into the podcast), as it should be.
Until recently, though, it was unclear how other users would be able to access this feature. However, some one at Automattic developed a WordPress plugin to display the Dave Winer blogroll on a WordPress site. Yesterday, the first new user (Doc Searls) announced that he had the blogroll plugin working on his site.
I think it is great when people are adding features to their sites. I also think it is great that Dave Winer is working to migrate his ideas to other platforms like WordPress, which have a large base of users. The base technology of this feature is based on the FeedLand service, so there is still a linkage between Dave Winer’s tool and deployment of this feature – something for users to keep in mind.
My last observation on this is perhaps a subtle one, but still significant. Following comments from Dave Winer over the years about RSS, and that new format creators should use a different name than RSS, I think there should be a different name for this feature, as it is a significant enhancement from traditional blogrolls. When I looked at Doc Searls’ implementation, I saw that the title of his was “Feedroll”. I think this is a great name for this new feature – let’s use it!