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WebRing is the first, largest, and fastest-growing service of its kind on the Internet, providing one of the easiest ways for visitors to navigate the Web. In each of its tens of thousands of Rings, Member web sites have banded together to form their sites into linked circles. Their purpose: to allow more visitors to reach them quickly and easily. An extraordinary system servicing three primary World Wide Web groups: Visitors, Member sites and advertiser-merchants, WebRing remains entirely open and free of charge to both Visitors and Members. As a leading online navigation aid, WebRing is experiencing a growth rate of over 10% monthly. Daily page requests from visitors exceed 2,000,000; Member sites total over 1,300,000; Rings total over 80,000. The WebRing system can support a nearly unlimited number of separate and distinct Rings across the Internet. This unique structure allows the creation and evolution of tens of thousands of different "web communities." Each Ring was started and is maintained by an individual website owner, it's RingMaster. Through navigation links found most often at the bottom of Member pages, Visitors can travel all or any of the sites in a Ring. They can move through a Ring in either direction, go to the next or previous site, or list the next five sites in the Ring. They can jump to a random site in the Ring, or survey all the sites that make up the Ring. The quickest way to find a Ring of interest is to visit WebRing's online Directory. There you can select a category, or use RingSearch to search for Rings across the entire system, then refine your search by searching within a Ring. If you can't find a Ring that suits your needs, you're free to start your own! A Brief History Operated by WebRing Inc. since August, 1997, WebRing was first created in June, 1995, by Sage Weil, launched in March, 1996, and moved onto its own server in September, 1996. WebRing drew its initial inspiration from a similar structure called EUROPa (Expanding Unidirectional Ring of Pages). Michael at newdream.net helped with initial graphic design. In August, 1995 Jerry Hierro suggested a centralized CGI program to run the system. The first new Ring created was the ESLoop. By the beginning of 1997, there were over 1,000 Rings on the system, and by May of that year 10,000. By April, 1998, there were over 40,000 Rings on WebRing. WebRing has been extensively covered by the news media, with stories appearing in: CNN-TV, CNET-TV, TAIPAN, Business Week, Investors' Business Daily, InfoWorld, WebWeek and Public Radio. |
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