50 Ways to Make the Web a Better Place
When people want to get popular on the Web they often have the popularity itself as a goal while in reality it’s just a by-product of doing the right thing. What is the right thing on the Internet? Of course it’s making the Web a better place itself. You can help people a lot online without even meeting them. Also
you can help a lot of people at once without having to write, call or meet everybody individually.
When you take a look at people who are really popular on the Web other than celebrities who are already well known outside of it you’ll notice that theses people have contributed something of value that was so important that people simply adore them.
Just consider the term popular which in essence stems from the word people itself. So you have to impress many people to become popular.
Ideally you forget the popularity contest completely and just focus on improving the Web
in order to reach that goal. While at it you may even discover that you don’t need to become popular anymore or that you are already popular enough but do not want to stop helping people and improving the Web.
In order to help you help other people and make the Web a better place I made a list of actions you can perform to actually improve the Web right now with little effort.
Sharing
- Share your work under a Creative Commons license
- Reblog, retweet, reshare, repin something you love and point to the original source
- Write a positive review of your favorite restaurant, bar or cafe you visit often
- Express gratitude to someone by sharing their work with proper attribution
- Share good news about major improvements done by others
Curation
- Create a Blekko slashtag/custom search engine for the topic you’re an expert in
- Find the real source of an popular image everybody uses without proper credits by using TinEye or Google Search by Image
- Create a Delicious stack showcasing something you admire
- Make a Twitter list of great people who specialize in a certain trade you can recommend
- Create a Pinboard for your favorite architect, artist, blogger, designer, musician or photographer
Publishing
- Share an inspiring real life story with your readers or followers
- Take a picture of something you love and upload it
- Make a case study or a tutorial displaying how you tackled and solved a problem
- Publish a list of the best resources from a particular field
- Print out your favorite blog post or article and give it to your co-workers, neighbors or family members
Linking
- Make a list of your favorite charities and link out to them
- Recommend a follower of yours to other people you know or know you
- Show appreciation to someone you look up to by writing an article about them
- Link out to someone new in your niche, industry or subculture who is just starting out
- Say “thank you” to someone who linked to a great site you didn’t know before
Helping
- Help a non-profit to optimize a blog or site for free
- Notify a webmaster or blogger of a broken link
- Add a useful resource in the comment section of a good blog post
- Support a project on Kickstarter, YouCaring, Kapipal or other crowdfunding sites
- Help a reporter out to get valuable insights into your trade
Speaking out
- Criticize a monopolistic corporation that attempts to dismantle the Web as we know it
- Express your distaste with articles that are openly attacking people or trades
- Report shady sites on Web of Trust in order to warn others
- Like a righteous comment up on Facebook,
- Amplify a dissident voice that does not agree with the mainstream opinion
Appreciation
- Write a friendly and thoughtful comment on someone’s site (I don’t mean “thank you great post” bot-like comments)
- Send your favorite site an email explaining why you like them
- Send a letter via snail mail to express your fondness with a webmaster
- Take and image of yourself smiling and dedicate it to someone on the Web
- Cite someone not very well known yet as if s/he was a famous philosopher
Design
- Make your font size bigger and easier to read
- Ensure there is enough white space on your site
- Add an easy to use feedback functionality to your website or blog
- Design for the other 90% too not just gadgets for rich kids
- Make your site accessible for blind people
Programming
- Create an IFTTT recipe and share it
- Create a WordPress plugin an offer it for free download
- Create a Firefox add on and let people get it for free
- Program a piece of standalone open source software to give it away
- Notify a hacked site and offer free support to clean it up
Humor
- Write a piece of satire about some all too powerful entity
- Draw a comic about something from your daily life that other can relate to
- Ridicule yourself a bit publicly, nobody is perfect
- Photograph your cat, dog or hamster while looking stupid and share it with the Web
- Take a misogynist, racist or otherwise offending joke and retell it without the offending part
You may not become a celebrity over night doing these things but I assure you that people will notice and remember you. Not all people will do it but some will. Enough people will know who you are and what you’ve done.
* Creative Commons image by Leo Grübler
