John Gruber quotes Mike Davidson’s image of the perfect news site:
As a closing thought, I’ve had this idea in my head for the last few years of what a perfect news site looks like, and it’s quite simple: a white screen with a list of 5 or 10 links that changes once a day. That’s it. Here’s the tricky part though: the 5 or 10 links need to be THE 5 or 10 links that are most useful to me on any given day. (link to original article)
Mike & John’s posts were triggered by Twitter’s acquisition of Summify, which buckets up the firehose of links from our social media feeds, but I think there’s a lesson closer to home. Their posts are from the perspective of the reader. As readers, we can absolutely (and should, and probably will have to) use services that give us algorithmic recommendations, but that’s not the only way: we already opt-in to the authors whose editorial hand we trust and enjoy.
Daring Fireball is exactly that short list of links for me, at least for a certain portion of my information diet. That and a few others (and yeah, I suppose some of them have do white backgrounds).
When I see tools like Summify, it makes me feel like I need to up my game as a writer, specifically how to be helpful to people interested in the same things as me. It took me a while to get this, but am now responding by trying to make this blog entirely transparent. It should be as clear a window as possible into the intersection of games, design and behavior change.
So that’s the lesson for authors. If you’re deeply involved in any area, perhaps it’s your job to create those 5 to 10 links. Why leave all the fun to the machines?
