3 ms·
> A webring was prided on offering a free and decentralized experience. Sounds great, and I imagine they were useful for the 90's web to jump from one Star War
by c7b 4y ago
> A webring was prided on offering a free and decentralized experience.
Sounds great, and I imagine they were useful for the 90's web to jump from one Star Wars fansite to the next (which would have been much harder to find otherwise), but frankly, I didn't feel a great desire to see them now. I guess that mode of browsing is simply not how I use the web nowadays, nor I imagine many other people.
- Melatonic 4y agoMaybe this is the direction we need to go in, however. Most people now do not type in URL's and a search engine becomes their single point of knowledge or discovery (or social media). Do we really want that much power in a single entity? What we might need are modern web rings - an easy to setup software that is plug in play for anyone who sets up a simple site - and that then can be configured to point to other sites. Maybe with a universal login for that "ring"
- c7b 4y agoI agree, I also often think that the web should become more decentralized again, but the thing is, it also needs to be fun to use. Mastodon is an interesting experiment in that regard. Maybe one could argue that link aggregators like HN are sort of a spiritual successor to the webring concept? You also go from one interesting site to the next, but you also have a social aspect, which makes it a lot more fun. The centralization is still quite strong, though. Just wondering whether you could keep the social element but make it more of a 'pull' thing, like webrings were, than a 'push' from a central site like HN.
- 8note 4y agoReddit already has this -- make yourself a subreddit and post links you like to it