Outside Counsel

A list of the most linked to blogs as of September, 2000. Interesting for several reasons. First, personally, I read slightly less than half of these pretty regularly before and after I started Outside Counsel. I read about eight of the 38 that are still in operation today. Of the now defunct, only Whim & Vinegar was ever something I went to regularly. Looking over the list, I don't think that it is entirely accurate to say that these sites were not "political"-- but they were certainly not polemical. For the most part they were general interest sites written by people whose interests included politics, intellectual property issues, "web culture" (which they helped to define, of course), pop culture, and their own day-to-day lives. Still today I find that such sites are the most interesting. I also find it notable that the measure of popularity used is the number of links "posted by weblogs on the web". Back then Camworld seemed to have the most comprehensive list-- it is now called "The Original Blogroll", but I'm not sure when the list that is now there was captured in amber. I do know that a fair number of sites that I still visit were originally brought to my attention by that list. Back then, it seems to me, the notion of how weblogs operated was somewhat different. Commenting systems were less common; instead people cross-linked and engaged in discussions by quoting and cross-linking. Being added to someone's list was a big deal-- people had elaborate policies about it. It seems to me that this is less of a thing now-- a blogroll is more of a personal bookmarks page, and less of a resource for one's readers. Measuring popularity by looking at the number of other places that have a site on their blogroll would not be a useful methodology today: you'd want to look at visitors or unique page views, or Google ranks or something. (Via Kottke-- number 2 with a bullet back in the day.)