The vanishing personal site
Posted in Random on: Friday, May 2, 2008 by Paul Boag
I notice that recently Zeldman mourned the decline of the personal site(A). Several responded rebutting the claim(B). Personally I am not sure I care.
As somebody who has just relaunched his site, surely I should be horrified that the personal site is on the decline. According to Zeldman, we are turning instead to services such as Flickr, Twitter and facebook.
However it strikes me that the personal site has always been a tool to achieve an aim, not the aim itself.
Why do people have personal sites? I can identify two common reasons.
Some have a personal site to increase their exposure. They use their site as a form of self promotion, in search of fame, prestige or their next job.
Others have a personal site for self expression. A place they can develop their creative abilities whether that is in design, coding, photography or writing.
In either case a personal website is no longer necessary. I can express myself just as easily through flickr or twitter. Their are entire communities dedicated to every conceivable type of self expression. Why would I choose to limit myself to a personal website?
As for self promotion, it is easier to go out "there" and promote yourself than expect people to stumble across your site. Youtube and Facebook are where people meet. If you want to be heard, that is where you must go.
Also the personal site is exclusive. It requires certain skills to create. My wife or mother is unlikely to have a personal site in the traditional sense. At most they will have a blog. But, why even have that when there are so many other services through which they can communicate. At most they require a single page that brings together these disparate services.
Of course there are always exceptions. If you are an inspiring web designer then you will probably need a personal site to show off your skills. But be careful. A fancy portfolio site is not enough without real client sites, as pointed out by Daniel Burka this week (C)
In conclusion, I have to agree with Zeldman that the time of the personal site is probably drawing to an end. However I cannot mourn its loss. To me the new generation of tools offer more than the personal site ever could. Why mourn the betamax cassette in an era of blueray and streaming high def movies?
8 Comments
Comments are for the discussion of this post. If you have other questions / comments then post them to the forum or send me an email
I have to disagree. I would argue that we will continue to see personal sites for some time to come but that they will be based on CMS systems like WordPress or Movable Type.
Like a marketing department in any company you need to figure out how to use facebook , flickr etc to bring traffic to your personal site. Once visitors are on your site you have the opportunity to promote yourself allot more than you would do on the one size fits all facebook type sites. You need a place to play in any creative industry. The Jody Ferry example in the Zeldman article is just lazy in my opionion.
I have to agree with Gareth, People are using these social media and micro blogging sites to drive traffic to there personal sites or to maintain an online identity in which relates to there personal site.
In my opinion they are becoming a lot more popular with many people having there own site. I can see more and more blogs and personal sites becoming more popular, I think that these social media sites are also used as tools to connect with the visitors of your website, weather it be for them to stalk what you are doing on twitter or stock you latest night out in your flickr account.
I have to confess that I’m curious as to what the superscripted notations after your links are for. They appear to be footnote references, but there aren’t any footnotes laying about anywhere.
Am I missing something?
Okay, so as I’m listening to the podcast, I’m assuming it’s part of your link structure, but… none of the URLs I’ve tried work. …a tad cryptic, no?
You are right. They are a reference to the links I read out on the show. As much for my reference as anybody elses. I probably should remove them. However, I like to keep people guessing :)
Another example…http://www.zachklein.com/
I can only partially agree with this. For photographers and such it’s OK to just have a Flickr account. It also works for graphic designers. But web designers and developers? That’s iffy territory. There are two reasons I have my own website:
1. A place to show my work in a way that allows me to be creative and experiment in a free environment.
2. A place where I can sharpen my skills and make the technical side as complex or simple as I want.
The first part can be done on any number of social networking services. But what about the second? How does using Flickr or Twitter showcase my design abilities? More to the point, how does it showcase my development abilities?
This isn’t an issue for a client but what about prospective employers? I currently freelance since I’m a student but when I graduate I want a studio gig. They don’t always pay as much but it’s a steady income and more than I currently need in order to live. Clients want to see my website with my work to see what I can create. Employers want the same thing but they also want to see how I can build my designs. They want to see what technical skills I have.
Take the prospective of an employer. You have two people who’ve submitted CVs. The first gives you a link to a Flickr account or a DeviantART account, the second their own site. Both are respectable enough these days in the professional design world. So the employer goes to look. Both have good designs. But the second person you can quickly see their technical skills and their ability to present information when it’s their choice, not the whim of a client. More, the site is always up where old sites might be taken down. Hard to see someone’s coding abilities if the site no longer exists.
Second person gets the job.
For a photographer, Flickr is a great option, same with DeviantART. But web designers and developers? We need sites. We need them to keep our skills fresh and we need them so clients and employers can see our skills quickly and easily.
i agree that personal sites in the truest sense are definately on the decline in the wake of facebook etc.. but equally don’t care!
the examples given above for web designers & developers are not really what i think of as ‘personal web pages’ anyway. i think that all of the social options such as flickr, deviantart etc are great but are still sort of looked down on and professionals are still expected to have a portfolio site with a dedicated domain name – however i see these as just that, professional not personal. what facebook and twitter etc have really killed is the blog. not big scale magazine style blogs but the small rambling, ‘here’s a picture of my dog’ type of blog because it really is just soooo much easier to do and share that stuff on a social networking site than having to drive the traffic into your own blog.
i used to run a personal blog alongside my portfolio site but finally shut it down in feburary for this very reason. i had been working on redesigning it to integrate digg, twitter, flickr, facebook etc and eventually just though – why bother!
there is a more legnthy post on the subject (and some interesting comments) in my archives here:
http://marilynshampoo.wordpress.com/2007/12/29/blogging-20/
and after the decision to dump it, in referance to a previous boagworld podcast:
http://theearlybird.co.uk/to-blog-or-not-to-blog/
save to say i felt at the time my decision was part of a trend away from personal blogs and towards social networking…