Link in Bio

Embracing an IndieWeb thing...

Over the years, I've been there as things have come and gone on the interwebs. I had accounts on AIM, MySpace, Blogger, FaceBook, WordPress, Google Plus, Twitter, Instagram, and plenty more. On each one, I wind up with a profile where I want to link people to other places I am online - and those places don't always make it easy to do that. So, something short and memorable that you could even type if you had to is ideal - like a handle: @briankardell or @bkardell or, in the end: bkardell.com is pretty great.

Back in 2016, some folks felt the same frustration and instead created this Linktree thing. But... It's just like, a fremium thing that gives you the most basic single page website ever? Yes, and today they have 50 million users and are valued at $1.3 billion - that's a value of $26/user. I mean, I found that amazing.

But, here's the thing: After a while I realized that there's something to it. Not the business model, specifically, but the link in bio idea. The link in bio is generally not a great website on its own, but it's a page where people can pretty quickly navigate to the thing they're looking for without other noise or fluff. Which is something that a home page often isn't. So, I've learned to really appreciate them, actually.

Back in about 2020, some IndieWeb folks began thinking about, criticizing and brainstorming around it too. They began writing about Link in Bio, and why it might be useful to have your own version. There are several examples of people doing something similar.

Recently a bunch of things smashed together in my mind. First, on ShopTalk, I heard Chris and Dave talking about "slash pages" (pages right off the root domain with well known names). Second, I've been working on social media plans - getting away from some platforms and moving to others and thinking about these problems. An IndieWeb style `/links` page, that adds rel="me" links is a really nice, simple way to achieve a whole lot of things if we'd all adopt it - not the least of which is that it's an evergreen link, almost as simple as a handle, to where people can find you should you choose to leave...

So, starting with me, and Igalia, you can find our links at bkardell.com/links and igalia.com/links respectively.