Google penalizing sites for linking to other sites and people getting paranoid about bleeding pagerank and getting penalized for unknowingly linking to 'bad neighborhoods' - quickly changed how many people would peruse your blog..
Removing blog rolls, web rings, pingomatic, technorati... some blogs adapted, most did not.. google is the reason blogs aren't read these days.
There was a time when sites promoted blogs via web rings and blog rolls - recent discussion -> https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36728870
Google penalizing sites for linking to other sites and people getting paranoid about bleeding pagerank and getting penalized for unknowingly linking to 'bad neighborhoods' - quickly changed how many people would peruse your blog..
Removing blog rolls, web rings, pingomatic, technorati... some blogs adapted, most did not.. google is the reason blogs aren't read these days.
On top of things mentioned in the post.