Where have the web pages gone?

TinyURL: http://tinyurl.com/cbpnf6

Recently, after reading an article by Jeffrey Zeldman, I've taken some time to reflect on the realities and extent of web outsourcing, both on my own personal web site as well as on web sites in general. It's giving me some perspective on what my site is to be or become, and it's challenging me to consider how my web site should function.

Just glancing at my web site, I thought that it was pretty well self-contained, but after a second look, I realize that it really isn't, and that indeed my most significant content is actually offloaded. The two pieces that I update most frequently are this blog and my Twitter account, @cbojar, and both of these pieces are externally hosted. The YouTube video on my front page is, as the name implies, hosted on YouTube. While I do host some of my own content, a significant portion of it, and the most actively maintained portion of it, is actually hosted, managed, and delivered by web sites that I do not own, control, or even have any real say over.

The reality is that I'm tech-savvy enough that I could roll my own versions of these services. Twitter is basically just 140 characters in a database entry. A blog is only slightly more complex because of its commenting, navigation, and editing features. With a little database wizardry and ASP magic, I could easily develop my own versions of these services, or, I might even be able to find free software on the Internet to do all of this for me already. I really don't need to use these services if I don't want to, and yet I, and many others, still do.

There are pieces that cannot be replicated on-site from these services, namely the communities behind them. Twitter wouldn't be nearly as interesting if it wasn't all aggregated together in one place. It's not impossible to build your own community nor is it impossible not to create services to integrate a dispersed community, though. Since these barriers aren't really barriers at all, why then do I and so many others still use these external services rather than centralize our own brand and content to ourselves? I guess, to be honest, it's tedious, time-consuming, and far simpler to go use something that is already prefabricated with all the bugs worked out by somebody else. Depending on which side of the coin comes up, you could call it effort-effective or you could call it simple laziness.

I don't necessarily want to disparage these technologies. They've made the Web simpler and given a digital voice to many who wouldn't otherwise have one. At the same time, though, they've taken away pieces of what used to be a very vibrant center for individual activity, and canned them into generic services that, while offering something we didn't have before, take away from the essential freedom and flexibility of the medium.