Three Reasons Why You Need to Own Your Personal Domain Name

This post is one in a series that discusses the results of the Online Footprint Survey results.  For a complete index of questions and topics, refer to the Online Footprint Survey Results post.

The results showed that 48% of respondents did not own their own name or a reasonable facsimile.  I had, actually, expected that to be a higher percentage.  Be that as it may, this is something that is important now and going to get very important in the near future.

Here are three reasons why you need to register your :

1. There are several billion people on the planet and not nearly enough domain names to go around.  This is leading to what I labeled the “21st Century Land Grab.”  It means that time is quickly running out and the longer you wait, the less likely it is that you will be able to register anything resembling your name or personal brand.
2. We live in the Age of Content, where more and more, the content you produce will shape others’ first impression and lasting perceptions of you.  Owning your own domain name is the most effective way to centralize and control this first impression.
3. Hosting your blog or personal web page as a subdomain on a third party service (for example, jondipietro.blogger.com) is the Internet equivalent of being a tenant at will.  You don’t own the property, can’t implement your own improvements, and could be kicked out at a moment’s notice.  It’s too precarious a position to hold your online identity.