Into the Personal-Website-Verse
The blogroll isn’t dead yet – some people still use it. So how about adding a little section or page to your site that does exactly the same? Link to the personal websites of people you respect and appreciate, maybe with a little description?
Matthias Ott • Into the Personal-Website-Verse
I think Substack has been enacting this strategy beautifully and to much success. Between the blogroll like side bar you can add to your front page, to the recommendations feature, and even the charts, its easy to live on Substack jumping from person to person. Substack not only brought back the newsletter but the personal website and RSS with it.
Whenever you stumble upon an interesting thought on another site, write about it and link to it. Not only is it respectful to link to the person you quoted, but hyperlinks are also the magic force holding the Web together. They are both helpful and powerful. You can also add a links section to your site, where you collect interesting links you foun... See more
Matthias Ott • Into the Personal-Website-Verse
This is why I continually refer back to the early days of the personal website. Most website now seem to write everything as if the are auditioning for Wired or The New York Times. Everything is an "article." Every thing is big and overly structured. In contrast, the personal website was about the small, the raw, and the connection. It was about completely realized concepts. It was reactions and journals. "I just read this paragraph and I think this." As you can probably tell by now, I'm trying to bring this energy here—right now.
RSS has been pronounced dead over and over again, yet it is still not dead and I doubt that it ever will be. In fact, it is witnessing a little comeback from time to time. Personally, I have started to use it more regularly again and others have, too. RSS is a great way to follow the people whose posts, ideas, and opinions matter to you.
Matthias Ott • Into the Personal-Website-Verse
RSS has been pronounced dead over and over again, yet it is still not dead and I doubt that it ever will be. In fact, it is witnessing a little comeback from time to time. Personally, I have started to use it more regularly again and others have, too. RSS is a great way to follow the people whose posts, ideas, and opinions matter to you.
Matthias Ott • Into the Personal-Website-Verse
RSS is and always has been superior to social media. There's no scrambling to see what you might have missed. There's no hunting. It's all there ready for you to read it when at YOUR pace. (I'd add Readwise Reader to this list. It's my choice.)
RSS has only failed to be the dominate source of curation because of advertising. Companies cannot inject advertising into your RSS feed, the way they can in a social feed. Their business model fails without that. Perhaps it's time we realized that social media companies are third-party interlopers who have injected themselves into the relationship between writer and reader, in the same way scammers and get rich quick gurus into our carefully curated feeds.