In the before times you needed to either know a webmaster with a reasonably popular web ring, or find and join a reasonably popular community forum around your interests and perform whatever archaic rituals they require to get permission to post links. Usually either of those options was wrapped up in a layer of nepotism (maybe that word is too strong?) and the upper limit to the traffic an average person could get from those activities was at most, three digits.

Then we got site generators from companies like yahoo that automatically added you to a directory and that was neat for a bit, until directories became flooded with everybody’s demo of HTML’s marquee tag. Notably, find-ability did not change.

Now we have companies like google that specialize in matching queries with responses. As would be expected in a profit-focused system, those responses can be influenced by the people trying to be found.

I wouldn’t argue that the current system of “pay somebody some money to be found” is better or more fair (fair at all?) but it’s provided a new avenue that at least on the surface feels easier. But either way, if someone is still chasing their two or three digits of readership, the webring/forum post model is still alive and well. That’s basically what sharing this article on HN (or Reddit/Facebook/Twitter) is, no?

Webrings are back with a vengeance! :D