I hadn’t really thought of it until now (no pun intended), but the set up of this website and how people opt in to creating a Now Page on their own websites, makes it an interesting and unique type of online directory for the discovery of a particular type of online set of links. Certainly an interesting set up and concept for
Brad Enslen and
Kicks Condor to take a look at in their online explorations of these types of discovery-based websites.
Certainly webmention could be used to collect the data and provide updates for such a directory. (I’ll note that most people who do have Now pages put a small notice at the bottom of their pages with a link back to the directory to reference it–something which I’m sure has helped spread the general idea.) One of the things I haven’t seen directories like this necessarily have is a feed of content that one could subscribe to updates from. While this one doesn’t have this sort of ability built into it (or seemingly any search or sorting functionality by categories or tags), it does have a Twitter feed that pushes out semi-regular updates of people within the directory. This way, if you’re subscribed, you see others’ updates being fed out. Every couple of months it also mentions me directly, which provides me with a regular reminder to update my presence within the directory.
I’m curious how we might expand this sort of concept to other types of online directories? Is there anything else useful about how this is one is set up?