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Nownownow

Matthias Ott, relaying an idea he heard from Derek Sivers:

Many personal websites, including this one here, have an “about” page. It’s a page that tells you something about the background of a person or about the services provided. But what this page often doesn’t answer – and neither do Twitter or Facebook pages – is what this person really is up to at the moment. A page that answers questions like: What are you focused on at this point in your life? What have you just started working on that excites you like nothing else? Did you just move to a new town? Did you start a new career as a Jengascript wrangler? To answer all those questions, Derek suggests to create a “now page”. A page that tells visitors of your site “what you’d tell a friend you hadn’t seen in a year.”

Very cool idea! Derek has a directory page of people who have done this.

I have more scattered thoughts:

  • It’s funny how social media sites aren’t very helpful with this. You’d think looking at someone’s social media profile would be the quickest and easiest way to catch up with what they are doing right now, but it just ain’t. That’s true for me, too. Random statements of what you’re working on don’t make very good social media posts. Maybe a pinned tweet could be like a “now” page, though.
  • I wonder if more homepages on people’s personal sites should be this. As I browse around some of the sites, I like a lot of the “now” pages more than I like the homepage.
  • I went with a “what I want you to do” section on my personal site. It’s a different vibe, but it almost doubles as a “now” page, as the things I want you to do are fairly related to the things I’m doing. Maybe the idea of a do page has some legs.

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