discovery

From IndieWeb


Discovery is a variety of methods for finding content, websites, communities, or people to follow on the web including search, directories, recommendation engines, tags, or other serendipitous methods; there are also discovery-algorithms for developers.

Web developers: if youโ€™re looking for discovery algorithms, see:

IndieWeb Examples

This Wiki

Indie Map

Microblog Discover

IndieWeb XYZ directory

webrings

The Feed Directory

Search My Site

  • Search My Site - provides for browsing and searching independent websites.

IndieWeb Search

  • IndieWeb Search was a search engine that lets you find websites and web pages made by IndieWeb community members. IndieWeb Search supports featured snippets and rich results for some queries.

IndieForums

  • IndieForums is a forum that provides the ability to aggregate posts and replies into threads for easier discovery. All posts on IndieForums are POSSE copies that are generated with u-syndication and Webmention.

Crawlers

Curated Lists for Discovery

I followed several new to me feeds today and then decidedโ€”why not share? There may be no other way to rediscover the social network that is blogging.

Finding new blogs is a big problem so, if you like this blog you may also appreciate the following people who have all interacted with the site via webmentions

Open Mentions

Open Mentions is a Webmention-based syndication service that provides the ability to aggregate content by topic.

Silo Examples

  • WordPress.com/discover - A daily selection of the best content published on WordPress, collected for you by humans who love to read.
  • https://belong.io - a website by Andy Baio that surfaces relevant links from his Twitter community
  • Twitter has a widely used #FollowFriday or #FF hashtag that people use to Tweet about friends, colleagues, and others that they find interesting to follow, generally with a short statement about why.
  • Serendeputy is a small, independently run discovery service similar to Nuzzel. It describes itself as "a personal newsfeed engine. It reads the open web and then organizes and scores it for you. It learns what you like and helps you find something interesting to read.But, hereโ€™s whatโ€™s different. Unlike your favorite search engines and social networks, Serendeputy is entirely transparent, putting you in control." Paid accounts are available to help support the developer.
  • Feedly provides an AI named Leo for aiding in filtering and discovering content in one's feed. While not completely granular, the system allows modifying inputs to improve finding content without some of the issues that may come with only having access to an algorithmic feed
  • Ampie is a discovery tool with bookmark functionality that one can connect to their Twitter account. When visiting a page, the browser extension will add a small tab to the bottom of the screen indicating how many others have either bookmarked ("amplified") on the service or shared the link on Twitter or Hacker News. The footer tab will also indicate the number of potentially interesting pages on the same domain. On pages that have been shared within your networks, links on pages visited with the extension enabled will be given a "footnote" marker with the & character. For more details see https://ampie.app/hello.

Screenshot of Ampie introduction showing its footer bar tab with a pop up description of what the &, Twitter, and Hacker News icons indicate.

  • Lobsters is an open source, technology-focused link-aggregation service similar to Hacker News. Users can both post to it as well as discover interesting topic-specific content from others. Comments on the service will send Webmentions to the original link if syndicated from a personal website.
  • Bear is a minimalist blogging platform. A /discover page highlights recommended posts of bloggers on the site.
  • Guppe Groups a group of bot accounts that can be used to aggregate social groups within the fediverse around a variety of topics like crafts, books, history, philosophy, etc.

Brainstorming

Discovery UI

Questions to consider

Questions to consider to help understand the broad space of what do people mean by "discovery" from a user feature perspective:

  • How do I discover "interesting [to me]" content to read, listen to, watch?
  • How do I publish my content so folks interested in it can more easily discover it?
  • How can I help this content (or person) I found be more easily discoverable for others who may be interested in it (them) as well?


Articles and Related Links

IndieWebCamp Related Sessions

See Also