New features in the SheWritesAI directory
Subscriber & follower counts along with dates, links to recent articles; more compact layout
Check out these new features of our interactive directory table (shewritesai.org/search)! What else would you like to see in our directory? Comment or DM!s
Recent Article
The date and link of a recent article are now included in a column. The table is sorted in descending order by this column when the table first loads. That means that, by default:
the newest articles are always at the top
the order of authors in the table will change from week to week
For now, these links will be updated once a week, typically when directory updates are published to announce newly added members. If pushing the updated links to the underlying Google Sheet were automated, it could be run more often, perhaps daily. (Volunteers who are proficient in Python or with Datawrapper are invited to help!)
Subscriber & Follower counts
A second automation now fetches the latest subscriber & follower counts for each directory member, and includes them in the table:
Note: Some authors have disabled the option to display subscriber count on their profiles. In these cases, the subscriber count will show as (unknown).
Since these counts change less often, the plan is to update them weekly. The subscriber & follower count column is not sortable; it’s for information only. (If you’d like to have these counts available as numbers at the end of the table for some reason, so they could be sorted, let me know.)
Dates Started & Added
The date the person was added to the directory is now in the last column of the table. To see who was most recently added to the directory, simply scroll to the right and click on the column header to sort in descending order.
This directory only started in December 2024. A lot of people were writing here long before that, and we don’t always find people right away. So the Date Added doesn’t tell you how long someone’s been writing here on Substack about AI.
Solution: The automation for the subscriber & follower counts now also fetches the Start Date (date the Substack profile was created). The Start Date column is sortable, so you can easily see:
who’s been here since the beginning (screen shot below)
who just started their Substack journey (screen shot below)
These dates don’t change, so the Start Date and Date Added columns will only be updated when new people are added to the directory in an update.
Usability and Compactness
This is a lot of information! To try to make it easier to scan and use, the newest directory:
Combines the Substack (SS) and LinkedIn (LI) profiles into a single column. The Substack link comes first and is in bold.
Combines the date of the recent article with the link into a single column. It can still be sorted by date.
To explore the table for yourself, use the widget below or click here to open it in a new window, full-width.
What do you think of these directory format updates? What other features would you like to see in the table to make it more useful for you, either as a directory member or as someone using the directory to find fresh voices on AI?