Your website has an /about page. Give it a /friends page too.

One simple address, yourdomain.com/friends, where you link to the people you like. A blogroll revival. This site is the directory.

Submit your site →Browse the directory 🎲 Random page

Hi! I'm Nick Gray. I love making friends; I even wrote a book about it, The 2-Hour Cocktail Party. My first website was on GeoCities, and I miss webrings, blogrolls, and the MySpace Top 8. This site is my attempt to build a directory, and maybe a movement, to get you to link to your friends.

Hi! I'm Nick Gray. My first website was on GeoCities. I miss webrings and blogrolls and the MySpace Top 8. So I made this directory to try to bring back those vibes.

Real /friends pages

see all →

jesse.id/friendsCelebrating my friends with a little blurb and a link to their stuff.

neddwyer.com/friendsSome I've known for twenty years; some do work I read the moment it lands.

joshualelon.com/friendsSome I know well, some I only know through their work online.

quinnsaysyes.com/friendsPeople worth knowing.

swipe → · see all

Why do this?

Linking out is generous. It's a free gift that sends traffic, boosts SEO, and says "I like this person." The old web was built out of personal sites pointing at each other. Most sites hoard their links now; your /friends page is the opposite.

What goes on it?

Whatever you want! A good way to get started: 5 real friends + 5 good follows. Some people list 3, some list 20+. Link to personal websites when you can; socials work too. Example: nickgray.net/friends

How do I get listed?

Publish the page, then submit your domain. I check it exists and list it immediately. No account, no queue.

▸ Isn't that just a blogroll?

Yes! And blogrolls were great, but nobody uses them anymore. /friends is a common address that's easy to add to any site with no plugins and no fancy code. Because everyone puts it in the same place, people (and robots) can find your trusted links. Social media shows who you follow, but you follow hundreds of accounts. This is smaller and more deliberate.

▸ For the SEO nerds

When you submit your website, you'll get a backlink from slashfriends.org. I'm building up the authority on this domain. Plus I'm making individual pages for each website, just like my personalwebsites.org site has (DA of 35), and putting your links in my sitemaps. As AI search and fan-out queries grow, I think these human-curated links help answer engines figure out who to cite. A /friends page is good for SEO and AEO, and as long as I can avoid the spammers, I think everyone wins.

Have your AI agent make a /friends page

$ I want to add a /friends page to my personal website. It's a page at /friends where I link to people I like and admire, kind of like an old-school blogroll.

I want to add a /friends page to my personal website. It's a page at /friends where I link to people I like and admire, kind of like an old-school blogroll.

Please help me build it:

1. Interview me first. Ask me for a few real friends and a few people whose work I admire online. For each one, get their name, their website or social profile link, and one short sentence on how I know them or why I like them. Ask me one question at a time so it's easy to answer.

2. Then create a page at the /friends path of my site. List each person with their name linked to their URL, followed by my one-line note. Match the style and layout of the rest of my site.

3. Then ask me: do I want to add a small credit line at the bottom of the page? It reads: "This is a /friends page, inspired by slashfriends.org and Nick Gray." with "slashfriends.org" linked to https://slashfriends.org and "Nick Gray" linked to https://nickgray.net. It's totally optional, but pages that link back get a FEATURED badge in the slashfriends.org directory. Only add it if I say yes.

When you're done, remind me to submit my new page at https://slashfriends.org so it gets added to the directory.

Paste into Claude, ChatGPT, or your favorite agent. It interviews you about your friends, then builds the page.

🔗 In praise of hyperlinks

The old web was built out of personal sites pointing at each other. I still love poking around people's little crafty corners of the Internet. Make a /friends page and show me who else you like!

Here's the thing: linking out is generous. It's a free gift that sends traffic, boosts SEO, and says "I like this person." Most sites hoard their links now. Your /friends page is the opposite: a place to share links freely with your friends, and to get them back.

What qualifies as a friend?

Honestly, that's a complicated question. Try not to overthink it! Just link to people you like and appreciate.

Where should I link to?

Ideally to their personal website. If they don't have one, a social media profile works too (Instagram, X, LinkedIn).

Standing on the shoulders of:

nownownow.com — Derek Sivers' directory of /now pages
uses.tech — the /uses pages movement
aboutideasnow.com — indexes /about, /ideas, and /now pages

Questions, ideas, or feedback?
hello@nickgray.net