@simonwoods made a great point about (re)building the web and search.
I’m convinced the best answer to search is websites. Let people collect and curate the information, rather than play Google’s game and then inch-by-inch the alternative search becomes viable –Do read that whole thread I linked to above and pay particular attention to Simon’s replies because he’s on to something.
Here are a couple of takeaways I want to highlight:
- We, the little people, need to rebuild the web. It does not do to just complain about silos and then point out other corporate alternatives, first and foremost the web needs websites built by individual humans, not just corporations, SEO’s and people trying to get their hand in your pocket. This is the foundation of everything.
- People will not leave the silos and corporate web unless there is an alternative, ie. someplace to go and that someplace to go is actually many places built by us. See #1 above.
- We should link freely from our sites to other sites we like. This, literally, helps rebuild the hyperlinked network of threads that gives The Web it’s name.
- Discovery, and search, will sort itself out, if we do #1,2, and 3. We may have to relearn how to surf the web again, and that is not a bad thing.
- Over time, we will eventually adapt to #4: humans will index this New Web we build using both old ways and new ways that have yet to invented. And yes, machines are also likely to index it as well. We may end up with 5,6, 10 or more favorite places we go to search and that is good.
How to Start
It’s not a pipe dream. It is ridiculously easy to make a website these days. You don’t need to know HTML. If you want to blog go to Micro.blog or Wordpress.com. If you do not want to blog and would prefer a static website, again go to Wordpress.com, because it’s just as easy to build a static site there and omit the blog.(Example: On my to-do list is to build a static website for my neighborhood’s Little Free Library. It only needs to be 1 - 3 static pages. I’m going to build it on Wordpress.com. It should not take long.)
The point is, everyone has some skill, idea, knowledge that is worth sharing and equally, there are other people looking for the information you have in your head and take for granted. Share it. We need to build that alternative.
Of course not everyone is going to build a website. But more of us should be. More of us can, we just don’t know how.
Pro Tip: With Micro.blog you can build your own website/blog almost by accident, while you are posting to social networks. Just use it to post away, the blog (website) just builds itself. No effort. :-) Example: Mumblings by Simon Woods is a Micro.blog blog.
More posts on ideas for websites in future posts.
Feel free to add to the discussion: agree? disagree? please comment.
