The truth on who owns your content, is a hard pill to swallow when it comes to your content on social networks and free blog sites. You don’t “own” it. This is not ‘new’ news. It happens a to a lot of bloggers.
When I say “own”, your words are yours, but where you posted it, is not. You could log into Facebook, only to find out everything is gone. Same could happen on Twitter, Google+, Ello, and other social networks. This can happen on WordPress.com, Blogger.com, and other free blog sites.
It could be a mistake, or somehow you posted something offensive, or maybe you’re not using your real name (and unable to verify it.) Maybe you violated some type of Terms of Service that you should have read? Maybe Twitter or Facebook just decides to stop existing. You never know, GeoCities disappeared, and back when Yahoo! Clubs and eGroups merged into Yahoo! Groups, the largest groups found that all of their members and posts were gone! Who knows? However, relying on social networks and free blog sites to be your content dump is not smart.
An example of this case is the one about author Dennis Cooper. Google Blogger removed his blog, and without a notice. Cooper posted on Facebook about the problem, and has been trying to get Google respond or restore his blog. If Google recovers and restores his website, that is not uncertain. They aren’t obligated to, and Cooper can’t really sue because Google’s terms say they can’t be held responsible for his blog’s loss, according to Google’s Terms of Services.
Kimberly Brink-Castleberry of Just Ask Kim says:
Even sites that you must use, but can’t own, like your Facebook business page, require an emergency plan for what you would do the day you log in and can’t access it.
Another thing that Kimberly and I agree on are that you should have a backup of your blog somewhere. You can’t rely on the Internet Archives Wayback Machine to record all of your website.
Your content has a lot of value.
Your content is still just as valuable on a social network as it is on a blog, but if you’ve only posted on your Facebook fan page, and it suddenly disappears, you can’t just be like the shrug emoji. If you’re a business, you can’t just rely on a Facebook fan page alone. People try it, but it’s a risk, because you can’t recover that content if a glitch accidentally corrupts that content so it’s no longer available, or if somehow, for whatever reason, your page was removed.
You are responsible for your own content.
Protect your content, by buying a domain and web hosting, and then build a website. Even if it’s simple and doesn’t look like much at first, your content is yours.
oh really ~ i am astonished .i just got aware by reading this post .
regards
shekhar
I am agree with you, thank you so much for your article
This is something. The value of content is infinite and I loved the way you put this idea here. I too not prefer free blog sites and also in terms of seo, I find self hosted wordpress pretty amazing for I have no boundations about customization there.
Great post!
I agree with you Nile. In order to protect our content that we are posting online, it is better to buy our own domain and secure for a web hosting. In this case we are in full control of of our content. WordPress is a free platform and comes with several blogging themes to choose from.
Hello Nile Flores,
i concur with you, This is something. The estimation of substance is vast and I adored the way you put this thought here. Keeping in mind the end goal to ensure our substance that we are posting on the web, it is ideal to purchase our own area and secure for a web facilitating. much thanks to you such a great amount for your article.
Really great post.
In my opinion, the value is in not only one single piece of content, the value is owning your collective voice, all the things that you say, the unique way in which you say them… the natural authority that you have been blessed with… that maybe copied or imitated but it will always appear fake… only you can be you