Knitting the Web: We Need Interlinkers
a day ago
- Feed aggregators like Bubbles.town that sort by popularity can indicate the health of the blogosphere, analogous to a bioindicator in nature.
- The web has been described through metaphors: the garden (cross-linked ideas), the stream (one-way social media), and the campfire (small blog conversations).
- A strong web depends on interlinking—meaningfully synthesizing others' ideas through link-rich posts, not just linkdumps.
- Personal knowledge management concepts (e.g., no orphan notes, dense linking) apply to public blogging for building a connected ecosystem.
- Metablogging (posts about blogging itself) can become banal; writers should draw from diverse culture, art, and everyday observations.
- Confidence to write is important, but it should focus on sharing valuable perspectives rather than writing about having nothing to say.
- Interlinking transforms isolated threads into a stronger whole, democratizing voices and countering academic gatekeeping.
- Early personal sites like Justin Hall's Justin's Links exemplify democratic digital literature and the transformative power of the IndieWeb.