Zeldman: The Vanishing Personal Site

Jeffrey Zeldman muses on the vanishing personal site. "We are witnessing the disappearance of the all-in-one, carefully designed personal site containing professional information, links, and brief bursts of frequently updated content to which others respond via comments." He showcases the site of interactive art director Jody Ferry (shown above), which sends you immediately to several external web services—the LinkedIn resume, the Flickr portfolio, etc. Zeldman doesn't approve or disapprove, but calls for conscious decision-making when it comes to scattering ourselves around the internet. He notes that "outsourcing the publication of our own content has long-term implications that point to more traffic for the web services we rely on, and less traffic and fewer readers for ourselves." This is an interesting point, especially for designers and artists looking to present a focused online presence—to quote from the insightful comment session: "technology has changed the way we market ourselves and our skills." Worth a read!