Self-hosting revisited

Back in 2018, I wrote about my reasons for hosting my blog on my own site, rather than having it hosted elsewhere. This domain, razumny.no, is in fact my second TLD as my first one was poached (but that is a story for another time), and I’ve had it since at least 2008. All of the reasons I listed back then remain true. Complete editorial control, expanding my competency portfolio, and using the site as a learning tool are all just as relevant to me now as they were almost four years ago, and I remain happy to have migrated off of Blogspot back in 2009.

The other day, one perspective that one might want to take into consideration was brought to my attention over on LinkedIn. A user – Thomas Moen – ran an experiment where he asked people who saw a specific post to like it. The experiment looked at both how long a given post on LI lives, as well as the importance of immediate spread of the post, followed by continuous drips in the time that follows.

While the original post intended to look at likes alone, he also saw a significant positive effect of comments. As comments demand more time and attention than likes, it should come as no surprise that comments have a larger impact on the algorithm than do likes. An acquaintance – Edgar – commented that this is mostly common sense; LinkedIn want to keep the audience on LinkedIn for as long as possible, and reward posts that create comments.

So, what does this mean for my view on blogging, and will I move to LinkedIn? Honestly, not all that much. I was certainly aware of the trends that Edgar pointed to (if only dimly), but I will still remain on a platform of my own control. I will continue to post links to my posts on LinkedIn, and I will continue to engage with people over there. It is, however, more important to me that my posts are readily accessed through search engines, than that they spread virally on LinkedIn – or any other specific platform, and I will not move to LinkedIn as my primary publication platform.

As I’ve said before; I write for a readership of one – that “one” being myself. That does not mean that anyone else isn’t welcome to read and benefit from what I write – if that had been the case, I’d hardly have posted them online, now would I? Even so, I think this is an important aspect to be aware of. If your primary platform for spread of your word is e.g. LinkedIn, it might make sense to use it as your publishing platform as well. The only one who can make that decision is you.