There's a quiet tradition in tech writing that goes back to the early 2000s: the link blog. Daring Fireball, Hacker News, Kottke.org—they all built their audiences partly on the back of thoughtfully curated links with a few lines of commentary. It's a simple idea: share something interesting from the web, add your thoughts, and let your readers discover new ideas.

But there's always been friction in the process. You'd paste a URL, then manually copy the title, snippet, and thumbnail image from the destination page. It's tedious work that pulls you away from the actual task—sharing and thinking about ideas.

That's where Link Jots come in.

Paste a URL, Get Everything

When you create a link jot in Jottings, you paste a URL. Behind the scenes, our backend uses the Open Graph protocol to automatically fetch the page's metadata:

• Title - The headline or article title
• Description - The summary or meta description
• Image - The social preview image (perfect for visual sharing)
• Site Name - Where the link comes from

No clicking through. No manual data entry. No missing context. The metadata appears instantly, and you can start adding your commentary right away.

Here's how it works under the hood:

1. You paste a URL into a new jot
2. Jottings queries the target page (with a polite user agent)
3. The page's HTML is parsed for Open Graph and Twitter Card meta tags
4. Title, description, and image are extracted
5. Relative URLs are converted to absolute URLs (so images actually load)
6. The metadata is displayed alongside your thoughts

If a page doesn't have Open Graph tags (older sites, some government pages), we gracefully fall back to standard HTML meta tags. If that fails too, we still give you something useful—the domain name and a basic description.

More Than Just Links

The power of link jots isn't just automation. It's about lowering the barrier to curation.

For reading logs: You can now quickly capture what you read. Link + your notes = instant reference. Two years from now, you'll have a searchable archive of the best articles you found, with your own context preserved.

For bookmarking: Instead of losing links in a browser folder, your link jots live on your site. They're indexed by search engines. They can be tagged for easy discovery. They become part of your digital garden.

For commentary: The best link blogs aren't just lists—they're curated conversations. You read something, you disagree, you want to add nuance. A one-line comment next to a link (or a paragraph, if you're feeling verbose) gives readers your perspective alongside the source.

For audience building: If you share interesting links consistently and add genuine insight, people will return. You become a filter for signal in an ocean of noise.

The Tradition Lives On

The link blog format never really disappeared. It evolved. Substack writers do it with newsletters. Twitter threads do it with quote tweets. Reddit does it with communities.

The difference with Jottings? Your link jots stay on your site, under your domain, forever. They're not algorithm-dependent. They're not locked into someone else's platform. They're yours.

Plus, with Jottings' custom domains feature, you can even use your own domain (blog.yourname.com) instead of a Jottings subdomain. Your site becomes the central hub for everything you share and think.

Built for Speed

We've designed link jots to be fast. The metadata fetch happens once, at creation time. There's no JavaScript needed on your site. Your page loads quickly. And because everything is cached in our database, subsequent visits to your site are instant.

The technical approach is simple: use the HTTP headers and Open Graph protocol—standards that have been part of the web for over a decade. We don't need to run JavaScript on the target page. We don't need to extract data from rendered DOM. We just read what the authors already put in the meta tags.

Try It Out

To use link jots, simply:

1. Create a new jot
2. Paste a URL
3. Watch the metadata appear
4. Add your thoughts
5. Publish

The URL remains clickable on your site, ready for your readers to explore. And your commentary? That stays with the link, helping future readers (including future you) remember why it mattered.

Whether you're building a reading list, curating industry news, or just sharing great writing with a small audience, link jots make it frictionless.

Start curating. Create your first Jottings site today.

Have a favorite link blog? Reply with a link and we'll add it to our reading list.