A few weeks ago, I wrote that the Follow button on a website should perhaps behave not as an action, but as a signal. At the time, I described it like this:

The button will become a live interface with its own signals and actions.

I think I'm finally starting to understand what I meant. Most Follow buttons on the web work roughly the same way:

1. Click the button.
2. Leave the website.
3. Open another platform.
4. Follow the source there.

This creates a strange situation. We say that we follow a website, a creator, or a project, but in reality we follow the platform through which that source is distributed. That is why I keep coming back to the idea of Direct Follow.

Not following a platform.

Not following an app.

But following the source itself.

Technically, this can be powered by many different mechanisms: RSS, podcasts, social networks, website monitoring, and many others. But the user shouldn't have to think about any of that. For the user, there is only one thing that matters: the source.

If a website is interesting, the user clicks:

⊕ Direct Follow

And from that moment on, a relationship exists between the user and the source. The word "relationship" has become the most important word in this entire idea.

In a previous post, I wrote:

The website itself becomes part of the subscription experience.

Today, I would put it even more simply. A website stops being a place that must be checked manually from time to time. It becomes a source that can be followed directly.

This week I built the first local version of Direct Follow and successfully tested the core scenario for the first time. At that moment, the idea stopped being just something on paper.

It became a working prototype. There is still a long road ahead before this becomes a complete product. But for the first time, I genuinely started to believe that subscribing to updates from any website might actually be possible.

And if this idea succeeds, the most important part of the entire system may turn out to be a single small button:

⊕ Direct Follow