Introducing AboutIdeasNow.com

A way to find interesting people outside of the big platforms

tldr: launched AboutIdeasNow.com today, check it out!

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Where do you exist online?

For most of us, the main answer is our profiles on platforms like Instagram, TikTok and LinkedIn. Those profiles say a little about who we are, and what we do, but:

• They’re owned by the platform

• They’re in the platform’s format

But many people — hundreds of thousands — have their own independent online profiles in the form of a personal site.

It’s their plot of internet land: usually a simple site which talks about their life and work in the format of their choosing. Sometimes a blog, too.

These sites are dotted across the vast terrain of the internet. But their usefulness is limited by their discoverability — it’s just not that easy to search across them. There’s no map.

That’s why today Peter Hagen and I launched AboutIdeasNow.com: a directory which lets you search across 7k+ personal sites to find interesting people directly, without relying on the big platforms.

The name may seem a little strange, but actually it makes sense.

First, a lot of personal sites already have /about pages (for me, it’s louis.work/about, and for Peter it’s lindylearn.io/about) which, as you’d expect, tell you about the person.

Second, Derek Sivers proposed that people create /now pages on their sites to say what they are doing at this point in time, instead of what they are generally about — so lots of people and added these pages to their personal sites.

And finally, we’re bringing to the table (thanks to Artem Tyurin’s suggestion) the proposal that people add /ideas pages, which tell the world the things you’d like to work on in case others want to join in or follow.

So AboutIdeasNow.com brings together content from these three different pages, across 7k+ personal sites, into one easily searchable place.

It’s an attempt to cut out the platforms a little — show just how much value there is on the decentralized internet, and (hopefully) create connections between people.

We hope that what we’ve built¹ will be useful both to those already convinced of the value of personal sites, like those in the IndieWeb movement, and those who don’t realize that there’s a world of fascinating people and ideas out there waiting to be explored.

Since our launch today, we’ve reached the top of Hacker News (although back down to #3 at the time of writing) and nearly 150 people have added their personal sites.

Try it out and let us know your thoughts, or join the discussion here!

And if you’re interested in creating a personal site to join in the fun but don’t know where to start, let me know and I’d be happy to help.

1. Open source under a MIT licence — we’re here on GitHub