_posts/2016-01-19-bring-back-your-blog.md
---
title: "‘An Invitation to Bring Back Your Personal Site’"
date: 2016-01-19 23:50:00 -06:00
layout: post
custom_type: link
link_url: http://www.elezea.com/2016/01/an-invitation/
---
Rian van der Merwe:
> The point is that publishing on Medium and Twitter and Facebook gives you an immediate shortcut to a huge audience, but of course those companies’ interests are in themselves, not in building *your* audience, so it’s very easy for them to change things around in a way that totally screws you over
I agree with the whole post, but especially this quote. A lot of the people I follow online use Medium these days. They cross-post their articles for the instant audience they’re being promised.
I don’t trust these companies with my content. You could argue that some audience is better than no audience, but I believe that it comes down to respecting your writing. Your writing has to mean something. In my case it means too much to give to a company where I’m only a column in a database.
Sure, the interests align right now, but look at Twitter. It’s a mess over there, and some of the same people are now at the helm of Medium. Once money becomes an issue, users of their platform are screwed. If you happen to be one of them, I second Rian’s motion. Bring back your personal blog.