I think the problem isn’t so much that blogrolls are dead but that the sites that use them are of no value in terms of SEO. Just think about it. Majority of Adult blogs have 100s of links in their blogroll, all are reciprocal links in some way. It’s just interlinking lots of sites that often are considered “bad” by google anyway. Their real value is probably none or very low. These type of links almost always sits in the same place out of context of the site, i.e. navigation bar. Their location on a site plus how they are setup and what they are linked to makes them very easy to identify for Google. Plus if you really are honest, these links are of no real use to people. How often does people click on a blogroll link vs a link in a blog post (at least in a very long blogroll list)?

So adding up all those things, their low value to surfers, how easy it would be to identify them for Google and how they interlink (or link) to lots of low value site, it kind of adds up to 0 SEO value.

I bet you that a single natural link (mention) in a blog post from a respectable site of any type, is worth 100 reciprocal blogroll links.

But no, reciprocal links are not entirely dead either. New sites, or any sites for that matter, need some type of incoming links. So there is still a place for links. Anyway.. Rawtop is better at explaining this than me as I’ve slowly picked it up on it from him.