I’ve been trying to figure out all the mysterious jargon of the blogosphere, and one that’s got me stumped is blogroll. Dave, what’s a blogroll?

I’m with you, it’s amazing how many different bits of jargon have now invaded the world of the Web with the increased popularity of weblogs. Fortunately, blogrolls are pretty easily defined:

A blogroll is a list of other weblogs that a given blogger either subscribes to or recommends.

Pop over to my colleague Debbie Weil’s terrific Blogwrite for CEOs, for example, and down the right column Debbie has a list of “CEO Blogs”, her first blogroll, and then below it (and below her advert) is “Corporate Blogs”, a second blogroll. Then there’s “Other Blog Resources” and “Other Smart Blogs”, for a total of four blogrolls on the same Weblog.

Other bloggers approach blogrolls differently. Pop over to Paul Chaney’s Radiant Marketing Group site and you’ll find his blogroll is called “Recommended Sites”, and it’s, again, on the far right side of the page. Halley Suitt’s Halley’s Comment weblog has two blogrolls, this time on the left side, called “New Blogs” and “Blogs”. VC and blogger Brad Feld’s Feld Thoughts has “Blogs I Read” on the lower left of the page.

There are some tools that are popular for managing blogrolls, notably Blogrolling, but many weblog authors just manage their own as a simple list of hypertext references.

When asked why have a blogroll, most bloggers I know, whether business bloggers or casual, hobbyist bloggers, answer that…