Who needs a website?

Well, I think I'm going to put the dream of having my own personal website on hold. Recently, I looked at how much time and effort it would take to make my ideal website and realized that I just don't have the desire to put a lot of time and energy into something like that any more, especially since there are so many (free) alternatives out there.   So let's look at all the reasons that I wanted a personal site and why I think that the cost to benefit ratio is just too high.

A personal space on the Internet

For a lot of people, getting noticed is the reason that they start putting themselves out on the World-Wide Web. When I was in high school my teachers would say, "it's a great place to put your résumé so you can get hired." Have some pictures? We'll you can post those bad boys up so everyone can see your "art."
That's great.
But with social networking being what it is, I no longer have to worry about finding web hosting, creating both design and content, or driving traffic.

File/project hosting

I know of a couple services that allow you to host files with varying degrees of control (password protected or available to the public) as well as different levels of bandwidth and total space.

One problem

I feel that there is one major problem with relieing on these services. That is the problem of control. As much as these systems offer they can't give you complete control. Some don't allow you to remove the ads that they put on your site, or restrict you from using javascript, flash or any other new technology that you just found out about 15 minutes ago. Want to have your own domain? Well, that might cost you. Want to take all the work that you've done and go somewhere else? There's no way to export it. Want to read your old work from a year ago? Nope, you can only go back 20 posts (I'm LOOKING AT YOU MYSPACE!!), you should have backed it up yourself if it was that important.

 

 

 

What? Not top 10/5 list of examples?

Yes, I know I don't have a list of examples for all the services I've talked about here. Not because I'm being lazy, but I think that if you are really interested you should look and learn for yourself.