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About

This website was created to generalize certain patterns I found myself repeating, such as:

(1) Sharing individual links with friends

I share articles, papers, videos, TV-shows, etc. with friends, but it's hard to keep track of what I have shared with whom. My friends are on different platforms, some of which spy on us and the links we send. A feed-based system would work better - then we could subscribe to each others feeds.

On this website I can create a collection and give my friends the link. They now have a public URL where every item I share ends up. If they have user accounts, we can follow each other and be automatically updated when new items are added. The downside is that we cannot discuss links directly on the platform. Many other platforms (reddit, hacker news, etc) do allow discussions, so if that is what you want then this site might not be for you.

(2) Sharing collections of links

When I research something or find a nice collection of links (e.g., "how to get started building a website") with many interesting resources, I might want to publish it somewhere because it's useful for others.

I could create an "awesome" list on GitHub, but that locks me to that platform, for better and worse. For some topics, you might have already have lists/collections on special sites: books on goodreads, movies on imdb, code repos on github (as stars), etc.

Some of these sites have good recommenders and communities. However, many try to sell you things, are bloated, track you, etc. If you move your collections of links to this site, you can share a link that is always public, and you can always export all your data.

(3) Bookmarking (with recommendations)

Bookmarks are great, so why not share one of your bookmark folders on this site?

For instance, you might have a bookmark folder "my favorite blogs" or "restaurants in London." There are two reasons to share these - one is altruistic and one is selfish:

  • For others: If you share your links, others might benefit from your discoveries. The internet is riddled with low-quality content, and your discoveries might help guide others toward useful information.
  • For yourself: Once people follow you and star your collections, a network is built, and you'll get recommendations. This can help you discover new interesting collections similar to your own.

What makes this site different?

There are many websites similar to this one.

  • Free. This site is free (if it becomes popular and server costs become unreasonable, I'll have to deal with that somehow - maybe donations)
  • No ads. There are no ads, no trackers, no analytics. There never will be.
  • Not a walled garden. Everything is public and open, like wikipedia or reddit.
  • Simple. The design is simple and the website is not bloated. Hopefully you agree.
  • Discovery. There are recommendation algorithms, but there is no incentive to keep you on this site. I want you to leave and find OTHER interesting websites. You can also choose not to use any recommendation algorithms, exploring at your own leisure using global recommenders instead of personalized ones.
  • Export your data. You can export all your data at any time
  • Easily delete your account. You can delete your user account and information at any time (but it's an open system, so public data will likely be scraped/indexed quickly)

How to get started?

Create a user account. Then share one of your bookmarked folders that might be interesting to others and create a collection out of it.

Star other interesting collections and follow users with similar interests. This doesn't only help you - it also helps others because it builds a "web of trust" and helps the recommendation algorithms work better.

Tips and tricks

  • Strip URLs. Instead of sharing https://www.amazon.com/Capital-Das-Kapital-Karl-Marx/dp/8175994142/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&sr=1-1, share https://www.amazon.com/Capital-Das-Kapital-Karl-Marx/dp/8175994142/. Remove the GET parameters and the end of the url: ref=sr_1_1?s=books&sr=1-1.
  • Share a stable link. Not everyone takes link rot seriously. Consider sharing an archived link. Instead of sharing https://www.google.com/search/howsearchworks/, share https://web.archive.org/web/20111104131332/https://www.google.com/competition/howgooglesearchworks.html from Internet Archive. Or at the very least look for a stable reference. For instance, if you are sharing papers, share a Digital Object Identifier.
  • Backup your data. Users can export all their data. Take a backup of your data every once in a while.

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  • ooh.directory is a collection of 2000+ blogs.