Leading question
What’s the history behind webrings, and how are they representative of a personal internet?
A webring is a group of websites that are linked together in a continuous linear loop. Websites are chained together such that visitors can access the next and previous sites in the loop with ease.
A key defining adjective of webrings is that they are curated — driven by humans and organic connection over algorithms.
While not inherently the point, webrings can be considered a search engine optimisation technique, because member websites of a webrings inherently drive traffic into other members’ websites.
Webrings were ubiquitous during the early internet — roughly estimating to be the ’90s and ’00s — and were mostly phased out in preference to search engines. Today, webrings remain a niche way of connecting humans and their websites together based on a shared interest.