Comments on: Death of the Personal Homepage

By: Andrea Hill

Andrea Hill — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 02:05:45 +0000

My URL “home page” just points to my blogs, an outdated portfolio, and my lifestream. I figure people can choose to follow me however they wish from there.

By: Andrea Hill

Andrea Hill — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 02:05:45 +0000

My URL “home page” just points to my blogs, an outdated portfolio, and my lifestream. I figure people can choose to follow me however they wish from there.

By: Andrea Hill (afhill)

Andrea Hill (afhill) — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 00:05:45 +0000

My URL “home page” just points to my blogs, an outdated portfolio, and my lifestream. I figure people can choose to follow me however they wish from there.

By: Josue

Josue — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 00:33:48 +0000

@whitneymcn that’s exactly what I ended up doing a few months ago =)

By: Josue

Josue — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 22:33:48 +0000

@whitneymcn that's exactly what I ended up doing a few months ago =)

By: whitneymcn

whitneymcn — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 18:55:46 +0000

I just recently re-entered the world of people who have a “personal Web page.” I’m in the camp of people who create a lot of stuff here and there across the Web, and I got tired of trying to decide which URL made sense to pass to others in a given situation (and, for that matter, tired of trying to remember all the URLs), so I created a sort of homepage for the first time in years.

The page, however, is nothing but a hub: simply links to the sites that I’ve created or use regularly (http://absono.us). I’ve seen a number of others take a similar approach, as well; so much of our activity online is tied to specific sites that pointers make more sense than a ca. 1999 home page.

My resume? On LinkedIn, no point in retyping it. Cool links I’ve found? All on del.icio.us already. You want to know what music I like and listen to? The Hype Machine already keeps track of that for me, why would I maintain another list?

The Web offers us far better tools to capture the different aspects of ourselves now, making links and pointers a much simpler, low-friction approach to offering an online presence.

By: my profile on BigLife social network

my profile on BigLife social network — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 18:36:31 +0000

I think my profile page on the BigLife.ws site is a perfect example of what you are talking about. I can cname any domain name directly to it. It’s a nice blend of personal and business and it’s on a social network which is a good fit for me. Having it on BigLife.ws means I get good pagerank too for any keywords I have on my page. I haven’t yet pasted a twitter or friendfeed widget on there but plan to.
~V

By: whitneymcn

whitneymcn — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 16:55:46 +0000

I just recently re-entered the world of people who have a "personal Web page." I'm in the camp of people who create a lot of stuff here and there across the Web, and I got tired of trying to decide which URL made sense to pass to others in a given situation (and, for that matter, tired of trying to remember all the URLs), so I created a sort of homepage for the first time in years.

The page, however, is nothing but a hub: simply links to the sites that I've created or use regularly (http://absono.us). I've seen a number of others take a similar approach, as well; so much of our activity online is tied to specific sites that pointers make more sense than a ca. 1999 home page.

My resume? On LinkedIn, no point in retyping it. Cool links I've found? All on del.icio.us already. You want to know what music I like and listen to? The Hype Machine already keeps track of that for me, why would I maintain another list?

The Web offers us far better tools to capture the different aspects of ourselves now, making links and pointers a much simpler, low-friction approach to offering an online presence.

By: my profile on BigLife social n

my profile on BigLife social n — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 16:36:31 +0000

I think my profile page on the BigLife.ws site is a perfect example of what you are talking about. I can cname any domain name directly to it. It's a nice blend of personal and business and it's on a social network which is a good fit for me. Having it on BigLife.ws means I get good pagerank too for any keywords I have on my page. I haven't yet pasted a twitter or friendfeed widget on there but plan to.
~V

By: Vitak

Vitak — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 15:06:35 +0000

When I wrote my first webpage page in, um, (cough cough) 1998, it included a lot of information and stories about the things I was interested in the time. Having a personal blog, I don’t see it as too different than that personal webpage I had 10 years ago. While I don’t include pictures of me or intimate details about my life (which I don’t do anywhere on the web except my SNS profile pages, and I don’t include much information there), my blog offers great insight into who I am through my thoughts on topics that matter to me.

Being in academia, I know that a lot of people in my profession still maintain personal homepages with their CVs, their class information, etc. They use those pages as a form of validation, as if to say, “You can trust the journal articles I have published because look at everything else I have done.” For us, it’s essential to maintain an air of legitimacy.

That said, I completely agree that SNSs have replaced the personal homepages of a decade ago. They are much easier to create and maintain, and they are linked directly to all of that person’s “friends’” pages. I mean, how much simpler can you get than the Facebook interface?

Finally, kids today are still being very creative via the Internet, just not necessarily through personal homepages. In the Pew Internet Project’s “Teens and Social Media” report from Dec. 2007, they reported the following stats regarding teens’ (12-17 year-olds) use of social media:

* 39% of online teens share their own artistic creations online, such as artwork, photos, stories, or videos, up from 33% in 2004.
* 33% create or work on webpages or blogs for others, including those for groups they belong to, friends, or school assignments, basically unchanged from 2004 (32%).
* 28% have created their own online journal or blog, up from 19% in 2004.
* 27% maintain their own personal webpage, up from 22% in 2004.
* 26% remix content they find online into their own creations, up from 19% in 2004.