The Kottke.org Rolodex

Over the weekend, I added a new feature to the site that, for now, is only accessible from the front page of the site, right after the third post on the page. It’s a list of websites and people that I follow — “kindred spirits, friends, open web enthusiasts, role models, fellow travelers, and collaborators”. It’s a blogroll, but I’m calling mine the Kottke.org Rolodex. Here’s what it looks like:

AI slop content increasingly proliferates on the internet and traffic from large tech companies like Google and Meta continues to fall off. In just the last two days, The Verge and Wired have launched new features that aim to strengthen their direct relationships & trust with their readers. From Wired’s announcement:

The platforms on which outlets like WIRED used to connect with readers, listeners, and viewers are failing in real time; Facebook traffic disappeared years ago, and now Google Search is dwindling as the company reorients users to rely on AI Overviews instead of links to credible publishers. More and more users are also skipping Google altogether, opting to use chatbots like ChatGPT or Claude to find information they once relied on news outlets for. Meanwhile, AI-generated slop and mis- and disinformation are seeping into the internet’s every pore, polluting social media feeds and drowning out news and human-driven storytelling.

At WIRED, our solution to this so-called “traffic apocalypse,” and the AI sloppification of the internet, is simple: connect our humans to all of you humans.

Some of the sites on the Rolodex have been moving in this direction as well — and KDO has too of course: with the membership program, comments on posts, the redesign, and some of the other social features that have been creeping in here and there, as well as some tried-and-true methods of direct connection like the twice-weekly newsletter, the RSS feed, and syndication to social sites that don’t devalue links, like Bluesky and Mastodon.

The Rolodex is part of this “strategy” of relationship-building and strengthening of trusted sources of information. You readers are curious about what I read and pay attention to, I enjoy linking to things I like (duh), and I believe it’s more important than ever for those sites who traffic in knowledge & curiosity and care about humans to acknowledge and stand with each other. As I wrote last year, we are not competitors; we are collaborators:

I love linking out to other sites. The strength of the open web is in its many connections between nodes…the more, the better. Links are the whole goddamned point of the web! I want to send people away from kottke.org to learn something new or have a chuckle and then come back the next day for more. The goal is connection, knowledge, and sharing — I proudly have no competitors in this endeavor, only collaborators.

So pop on in to the front page of the site and scroll down a bit to take a look. Clicking the “refresh” link will load five more sites from the list. I hope you find something you like.

That’s not all I’m hoping to do with the Rolodex, but it’s a good start. Feedback, etc. is welcome.

Tags: kottke.org

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