Another - somewhat quirky - concept was called 'webrings': https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Webring
These allowed websites with related or similar content (though the definition of what would be similar enough to qualify could vary quite a bit) to link to a 'next' and a 'previous' site. This obviously didn't scale to an exponentially growing web but it allowed for serendipitous content discovery, which could be quite delightful sometimes (and disturbing at other times).
"Worth your time" is a pretty relative notion, though. It's worth mentioning that the web of 15-20 years ago was of very little "value" compared to what we have today. Some links I remember sharing on a mailing list circa 2000 include the Poorly Drawn Lamp Page [1] and the William Shatner Acting Simulator [2] (warning: the depiction of Sulu has not aged well).
After that there were USENET/Newsgroups. Its a universal discussion board. You can still get to it by using 'news reader' software package and finding an open server. You can also pay for access but unless you really need the need the history ::cough:: or special content it's not worth it. Otherwise use Google Groups which is both a USENET reader and it's forum system (https://groups.google.com/).
Yahoo.com was the best directory at the time.(http://web.archive.org/web/19970124192912/http://www10.yahoo...) Back in the day there were few enough major websites that Yahoo had time to review and categorized sites by hand. As Yahoo became more of a search engine company and less of a director the Mozzill foundation created DMOZ.org.
DMOZ was supposed to be the 'democratic' replacement for Yahoo. With the open nature of the internet bad player starting getting up voted and it became spammed horribly. Plus search engine were getting big. It never really took off.
In between Yahoo being the dominate directory and Google trying to become the biggest search engine I like sites such as Webcrawler.com and Lycos.com. They're both still around. If I remember correctly Webcrawler still crawls site but it so back logged that its like 1-2 year behind. Lycos stopped doing it's crawls for a while was feed from Google search results. But it seems that Lycos started doing it's crawls again but with a really engine.
Finally we used a real time text chat system called IRC (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Relay_Chat). I loved using mIRC on Windows 3.1.(https://www.mirc.com/) It was simple and fast. But by modern standards it not very intuitive. Think of Discord where you can have unfiltered channels but with almost no filters.
FYI: if you want to have some fun check out Microsoft Comic Chat. It worked on IRC as well (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Comic_Chat). That was abused so badly at the time.
The most social things I could think of in the late 90s, besides chatrooms and IM, were simple bulletin board systems (with the branched hierarchy style of posts like Reddit or HN), guestbooks (one-way shoutboxes, easy to spam links), or webrings.
Webrings were a cool concept because it ties in people with a common interest, but without being tightly dependent on where your site is hosted on. Your site or blog could be hosted anywhere, you'd just have to copy and paste some code for the link and button to lead you to the directory.
Similar ideas propped up in other communities, like fandoms of a fictional work, where they linked other websites of the same fandom via buttons with a unique design.
In the heyday of the early blogging movement, "blogrolls" (links to other blogs the author followed) were common. So were archives categorized by date, category, and eventually tags. And "related posts" widgets.
As to where you could get started, a topic in mind and a search on your engine of choice would usually get you going. Or a visit to the Yahoo directory. Or bookmarks of your favorite frequently-updated sites.
I'm not sure exactly what skill you're looking for. A skill for finding things to read/watch to keep you occupied? Doing research or finding answers to questions online? Something else?
Social was mainly USENET newsgroups and email lists...
Many websites offered links sections to link to othe similar related things.
Some websites also were part of "ring networks" which would chain the websites together with web plugins and a database of member sites so fans could tour the ring members.
My site still uses a lot of links (I need to go through those...), example:
http://portcommodore.com/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=larry:comp:sta...
I think there always has been some sort of 'social' for site discovery (Fark/Slashdot etc), it was just more diverse than it is now.
* * *
I got my first computer right at the end of the dotcom bubble era but before the social network era. As I remember it, search engines (including Google) returned way more semi-random results, and seemed to give less weight to big-brand websites. So even in page 1 or 2 you would get links to small websites, often published by individuals. There was SEO spam but it seemed more overt and hence, more avoidable (it wasn't the kind of content that's ostensibly original, but made specifically to rank well and get ad money.)
After a while, blogs became a viable way to find interesting content - bloggers often published commentary on stuff they'd seen.
YouTube reminds me of this flow sometimes - you can watch mildly interesting stuff for hours - but it seems increasingly optimized for a different flow, so it recommends stuff that's not exactly interesting, but meets some business criteria. Wikipedia too, but it lacks the different voices/tones/styles that you can see in different websites.
Partly because of this background, FB never had me - I was partial to Twitter exactly because it kept this "Internet as a separate place with interesting stuff to see" feeling. FB wanted credentials, in-grouping, established traditions.
Later on sites like Yahoo, AltaVista and Lycos would help you find information.
You also had webrings to lead you around.
It used to be pretty fun.
My internet browsing was much more contained to the network of sites that I was already aware of.
This was in 2006/2007 when I first started using the internet. The aggregators definitely existed back then, but I wasn't aware of them.
There was also just finding some news sites and returning to them often. I would start out at the news.com and download.com CNet sites.
Slashdot came later for me.
As any bureaucracy knows, who makes the map controls the territory :)
The degree of my interest is partly based on personal relevance and partly based on "reputation" of the poster, for lack of a better term.
If I know someone has a strong background in something and/or posts a lot on the topic, I may click into something they posted in part because they posted it. This can be true in spite of personal friction between us or me having a negative view of them or their behavior.
It isn't a case of "I like them personally or see them as a friend, so I check their links." It is very much "I believe them to be knowledgeable about X topic and I am interested in X topic."
If I don't have any idea who they are but they wrote an interesting comment and linked something within that comment, I may take a peek for that reason.
Conversely, if I have reason to believe they are pushing an agenda in a completely disrespectful fashion and/or "don't confuse me with the facts, my mind is made up" kind of way, I may skip their links because it is probably fruit of the poison seed. On HN, I occasionally run across, for example, angry "feminist" handles who are just here to spew manhating venom. The content they want promoted here is often vile and far worse than merely a waste of my time. I may feel like I need a shower after being exposed. No thank you.
I sometimes know of someone who is a weird intersection between I respect their knowledge and I cringe at their blatant toxic behavior. That gets tricky at times. But, most of the time, checking information posted by someone who has a strong background works well as a filter for finding good information without wasting a whole lot of my time.
I currently spend time on HN, twitter and reddit. You can kind of curate twitter content because what is in your feed is largely based on who you follow. I unfollow people who fill my timeline with things I find objectionable and I keep an eye out for interesting accounts.
On reddit, I avoid the front page and gravitate towards small out of the way subreddits pertinent to my interests. My recent experience of reddit has been overall positive. The first time I tried it, it lived down to its nasty reputation. This time has been completely different and it has a lot to do with how I am interacting with the site.
I'm strongly interested in people. That goes a long way towards exposing me to diverse content.
