I've been thinking about links a lot lately. Not in the SEO sense—I mean the actual human act of sharing something you found on the internet with the people who follow you.

There's a peculiar problem with link sharing in 2025: it's become either invisible or obnoxious. Most social platforms have turned links into preview cards with automated titles and descriptions that miss the entire point. Meanwhile, the people doing the best work in curation are adding layers of their own thinking, their own voice, their own context.

That's what link jots are designed to do.

The Problem With Generic Link Shares

When you paste a link into most platforms, you get a preview card. The platform auto-fetches the metadata (title, description, image) from the page's Open Graph tags. And then what? You're at the mercy of whoever wrote those tags. Sometimes they're great. Often, they're written for algorithms, not for humans.

I notice this constantly. I'll see someone share a brilliant article with a generic title like "Untitled Document" or a description that's just the first sentence of the article. The link is valuable, but the context is lost.

That's the opposite of curation. That's just link dumping.

Real curation is different. It's you—your judgment, your voice, your ability to recognize why something matters—layered on top of the link itself.

How Jottings Link Jots Work

When you create a link jot in Jottings, we do the metadata fetching for you. You paste the URL, and we pull the title, description, and image from the page. It's fast, it's automatic, and it removes friction.

But here's the key: we're just getting started.

That fetched metadata is a foundation. It's the thing that tells readers what they're about to click on. But you're the one who decides whether it's worth clicking. And that's where your voice comes in.

Adding Your Voice to the Link

The difference between a good link share and one that stands out is simple: why should I care?

When you share a link on Jottings, you can add your own commentary. You can write a sentence. You can write a paragraph. You can explain what grabbed you about the piece, what you disagree with, what you learned.

Here's an example of what I mean:

You find an article about why distributed systems are harder than they look. The auto-fetched title is something like "The Hidden Complexity of Distributed Systems." Generic. Useful. But then you add: "This finally articulates why my team spent six months debugging a race condition. Worth reading if you've ever wondered why 'just use a queue' is not the solution to everything."

Suddenly, that link has context. It has perspective. It has you.

That's the difference between sharing a link and curating something for your audience.

Customizing Titles and Descriptions

Not every page has great Open Graph metadata. Some do. Some don't. Jottings lets you customize both the title and description that appears with your link jot.

Maybe the article's title is three sentences long. You can shorten it. Maybe the auto-fetched description doesn't capture the actual point. You can rewrite it. Maybe you want to add a different image entirely.

This is where you take ownership. You're not just passing along what the page provides—you're curating what you want your readers to see.

I use this constantly. I'll find something interesting on Twitter (yes, I still read Twitter), but the quoted text doesn't capture the thing I found valuable. So I customize the description to highlight what actually matters. It takes 10 extra seconds. It makes all the difference.

Being a Curator, Not a Link Dumper

Here's what I've learned about what makes someone a great curator:

They add context. They don't just dump links. They explain why the link exists in their feed. One sentence, five paragraphs—whatever fits.

They have taste. They're selective. They don't share everything they find. They share the things that resonate with their values or interests. That selectivity is what makes their voice trustworthy.

They take responsibility. They read at least the beginning of what they're sharing. They don't amplify things they haven't looked at. They don't mislead their audience with sensational titles.

They're honest about disagreement. Sometimes they share something because they think it's important and wrong. They say that. They don't pretend neutrality when they're actually disagreeing.

They respect their audience's time. They write brief, useful commentary. They don't turn every link share into an essay. They let people decide quickly whether something is for them.

These aren't rules. They're just patterns I've noticed in the people I actually follow and read.

A Practical Approach

Here's how I think about creating link jots:

First, I ask: Why does this exist in my feed? If I don't have an answer, maybe it doesn't belong there. Sharing things you found slightly interesting is different from curating things that actually matter to your thinking.

Second, I read enough of the thing to have an honest opinion. Sometimes that's five minutes. Sometimes it's the headline and the comments. But I don't share something I haven't actually engaged with.

Third, I write one or two sentences about it. That's usually enough. Just enough to tell people why this particular link made it past my filter.

And sometimes—occasionally—I just share a link with no commentary at all. Sometimes the thing speaks for itself, and adding words would diminish it.

Why This Matters

We're drowning in content. Everyone has a feed full of things. The real scarcity isn't information—it's good taste and honest perspective.

When you curate thoughtfully, you're offering something valuable that algorithms and aggregators can't. You're offering your judgment. You're offering your ability to see what's signal and what's noise.

That's worth something. People notice. People follow curators because curators make their lives better—they save time, they surface things worth paying attention to, they add their voice and thinking to the things they share.

Link jots in Jottings are built for that kind of curation. Not for broadcasting. Not for engagement metrics. Just for sharing things that matter to you, in a way that respects the people reading them.

Try It Out

If you've been thinking about where to share the things you find—the articles, the tools, the ideas that grab you—give Jottings a try.

Create a link jot. Watch how the metadata auto-fetches. Add your voice. See what happens when you start curating instead of dumping.

It's a different way of sharing. And I think you'll find it a lot more rewarding than the usual scroll-and-share.

Start curating today at Jottings. Your voice matters more than you think.