I have been a ringmaster of over a dozen webrings for several years. I've used all of
ring systems, both as ringmember and ringmaster. I am extremely active in ring community.Webrings are intended to link together sites which share a common theme. They were created as an alternative to directories and search engines, which are frequently run by faceless corporations or uncaring individuals who don't really give a hoot about anything but how to get more revenue and improve quality of their "image".
You see, webmaster who is interested in "making a living" from his website or getting a ton of money is actually in minority. In fact, entire phenomenon of cashing in on this vast communication medium is very new. The internet and web was originally intended to be a shared pool of information, freely available to all. It was an ideal of many of founders to be able to share information, experiences and have endless conversations freely and without bounds.
Perhaps this ideal is one of factors which led to huge internet explosion a few years ago: it was ripe virgin territory for commerce and abuse. Unfortunately, dream of founders has often been overshadowed by vast corporations and legions of webmasters intent only upon cashing in as quickly as possible.
Fortunately, though, dream is still alive behind venor of corporate greed. There are still many millions of webmasters who have no goal other than communication. The vast majority of people on web simply want to "talk" to someone, to become educated, to learn something, and perhaps to be entertained.
The search engines and directories were begun by some of these early dreamers, and for years they offered surfers true value in terms of information. Of course, huge influx of greed (primarily from unethical adult and other webmasters), these portals found themselves involved in a war. I still remember time when just about any term in any search engine would produce more adult sites than anything else. In fact, search engines were rendered useless to most surfers and directories even more so.
In addition, these engines were bought up by huge corporations who saw them simply as a way to create income. They have become, in reality, useless to surfers who desire useful information. Surfers have more and more come to understand that engines are simply vast money making machines, and this is primary reason why these have been croaking right and left lately. They are useless to average user who only wants to find something useful - not something popular or something to purchase.
This is datum that major engines are ignorant about (or couldn't care less about, which is worse): surfers don't care about popular sites, they don't are how many webmasters have been conned into linking to a site, they could not care less about what metatags say; and they certainly don't care or even know about PR (Page Rank) and SEO (Seach Engine Optimization). Surfers want information, and that information is far more likely to be found on a small website (even on a free host) than on some money making machine with a good PR.
