By Ethan Maurice | January 21, 2021
This January, I launched my version of the Needlestack, a new type of page for the internet.
The idea of the Needlestack is simple: if everyone with a blog or website had a dedicated page of links to what they personally consider the best pages on the entire internet, and we had a directory linking those pages together, we could separate “the needles from the haystack” of the internet and make the internet browsable by best.
The challenge for the Needlestack now is to find its audacious first adopters willing to make their own without much social proof. If my Needlestack is the flint, those first to make their own Needlestack are the sparks needed for this new idea to catch and spread (shout out to CEDAR for being the first to make the leap!).
Fortunately, the Needlestack has compelling incentives built into the idea to get and keep it growing. Rather than leave them to intuition, I will briefly outline each below.
7 Reasons to Make a Needlestack:
The sooner you make a Needlestack, the higher it will be in the list of Needlestacks. This is a list browsed by curious people deliberately looking for great, new things on the web — and they’re probably going to start browsing from the top of the list.
You will receive an SEO-improving link to your website. I constantly receive emails from content markers willing to pay for such a link to their website from mine. I believe this is quite valuable.
Promoting the tremendous creations of others in your Needlestack is a powerful way to say thanks. It’s also a good excuse to reach out and genuinely thank someone. I have had the great pleasure of connecting with several of my literary heroes this way in the past two weeks.
You get to share the things that have most influenced you with those who dig your work. Imagine if you could look through the Needlestacks of your greatest heroes… You can do that for those who look to you.
You can include affiliate links and feel good about making money by pointing to things you truly believe in. Of course, any affiliate link must point to something you consider among the best of the best on the web. Otherwise, you would be missing the entire point of the Needlestack.
If and when Needlestacks abound, the bird’s eye view of the influences that shape us will be utterly fascinating. How much collective overlap do we all have? What crazy corners of the internet do I know nothing of? I can’t wait to find out.
Honor quality on the internet. We have yet to figure out how to make the cream of the crop rise to the top of the internet. Social media promotes what is recent and its algorithms are designed to hold our attention. Search engines measure relevance and popularity through links. Reddit came close but tends to promote clever over quality. The internet has yet to be truly made browsable by best. We can change that.
Please join me in weaving the first threads in a web of what is best across the web! Interested? Check out my Needlestack. All you need to know to make your own can be found in the Q&A near the bottom of the page.
*Photo by Aurélie Cenno of artist Sven Sachsalber looking for a needle in a haystack.
