6 ms·

I agree. Months (or years ago), when influencers started to populate the internet, I often asked myself "What's their website?" after visiting their Instagram/T

by 101008 6y ago

I agree. Months (or years ago), when influencers started to populate the internet, I often asked myself "What's their website?" after visiting their Instagram/Twitter/YouTube profile. The truth is, they don't need a website anymore. I am not talking only about teens influencers. Does a restaurant need a website, or a presence on Instagram/Facebook/{delivery app} is enough? I think the later. Sadly we have evolved into this.

quaintdev 6y ago
Remember there use to be celebrity websites, fans use to create websites for their favourite celebs? Not anymore. Now you only see celebrity profiles and bunch of fanpages posting same content all over again.
- jeanlucas 6y ago
  Yet, you have full blown communities with people creating art for their role models / artists. Take like pewdiepie and his subreddit, the creations there are nothing more than amazing, from video to even handcrafted art. Several artists have fun communities like this and they can interact with them directly.
  - rm445 6y ago
    Great point. Most people can create an old-school website with a little effort using few or basic tools, but creating something that can host a community is/was much harder. phpbb was about the limit. It's almost an inversion - instead of many community sites, there are many users together on a smaller number of community groups, which are generally built on social platforms such as reddit and Facebook which make it easy to create them. It's not necessarily a bad thing, except that the most invested people in the communities don't have ownership of the platform or the data, so the communities that matter to them are vulnerable to any arbitrary changes in what the platform owners choose to do.
  - _fat_santa 6y ago
    It goes even deeper than that. Take the term "X Twitter" or "X Youtube" where X is literally any subject, or group you can think of. I frequent Youtube a ton and I noticed there are distinct communities on there like "Car Youtube" or "Gaming Youtube", hell there's entire communities built up around busting scammers on Instagram (those guys posting with stack of cash and a Lambo). You start watching one channel and realize these guys do colabs with others in that space. Just a few months ago 3-4 Car Youtubers I watch got together and created "CarTrek" which is like a full blown TopGear esque car show.
mrisoli 6y ago
There's good and bad in this. It sucks that we depend on Facebook/Instagram and others to get information about a local business like a restaurant we want to visit. But years ago if you wanted information about a restaurant on the web... was it even there? If they even had a website it was built by the owner's nephew or maybe used some wix template, then if it does exist you're going all over the place to find contact information, opening hours are probably missing, menu might be anything from another page to a download of a photographed PDF. I like the fact that I can go to a social network profile and there's a big button with contact information in the same place for all businesses.
- meekrohprocess 6y ago
  >But years ago if you wanted information about a restaurant on the web... was it even there? Yes, it was. ~10-20 years ago, local restaurants and businesses would pay high school / college kids a pittance set up a simple website for them. No online ordering, but they would usually have a menu, phone number, and hours. The result was that the pages didn't all look like SquareSpace templates, and a lot of young people got their first leg up into a tech career.
npongratz 6y ago
> Does a restaurant need a website, or a presence on Instagram/Facebook/{delivery app} is enough? I don't trust the platforms you cited, so when I want to call a restaurant and they want my business, they must have a website. Besides, I don't want a third party asserting itself into my relationship with the restaurant.
- jason0597 6y ago
  Does that mean you won't eat at restaurants who don't have a website?
  - ht_th 6y ago
    Possibly, yes. If I am unfamiliar with the restaurant, or I have a question regarding their menu or my dietary restrictions, if they do not have a website with an email address or contact form AND they do not react in reasonable time, I will not eat at that restaurant.
  - npongratz 6y ago
    There are a multitude of restaurants. I am personally familiar with many of them, some with websites, others without. That's not the situation I'm writing about. If I am considering patronizing an unfamiliar restaurant, and my only source of information about it is some untrustworthy third party platform, I'm moving on. Like I said, many restaurants exist, I'm losing nothing by going somewhere trustworthy. And again, I cannot emphasize this enough: I do not want some third party asserting itself into my relationship with the restaurant.
    - malodyets 6y ago
      With regard to restaurants, this perspective doesn’t make sense to me, primarily because reviews are found on third party services and not on the restaurant’s website. If I’m going to a new area, I rely on ratings and reviews to know if I want to try the restaurant.
      - 6y ago
6510 6y ago
> they don't need a website anymore. until they get kicked off
- 6510 6y ago
  Sometimes down votes are so hilarious. Whatever nice things one can say about platforms (and there are many) people are going to get kicked off. Of course the majority of the time they did something that was not allowed. No one can be mr perfect 24/7 365 days of the year, the rules can be totally idiotic too of course, at the scale the big platforms work false positives are [sadly] impossible to avoid. But it doesn't matter. The platforms have to do house keeping, its unavoidable. If one deserved to get kicked off is entirely besides the point: It is not your website, you are a guest. Your own website is an entirely different story. You have to break actual laws and you may deserve your day in court. Compared to the cyborg-kangaroo court this is the superior deal. You can down vote me all day long, I have not broken any laws. You cant persecute and silence me for stating the obvious. On HN however this is how things work, you feel the statement lacks effort, is off topic or whatever other reason you can think of and then people get silenced. I sure as hell hope HN doesn't implement an internet kangaroo court room (like wikipedia has, woah the walls of text generated by tiny issues!) but you can expect people not to speak their mind, not share their version of the story, to attempt to live up to your expectations and learn to survive your judgement. This is why you need your own website.
marc_io 6y ago
Sure, it's the easiest way for small businesses, but in doing so, they are giving away too much of their marketing and branding - until they become hostages. Not good, specially for online businesses. It's like selling a product on marketplaces: inevitably, that fateful day comes when the platform decides to change the rules – against your best commercial interests – and the only two options you have are: stay, keep your head down and obey... or leave and start almost from scratch.

by 101008 6y ago

quaintdev 6y ago

Remember there use to be celebrity websites, fans use to create websites for their favourite celebs? Not anymore. Now you only see celebrity profiles and bunch of fanpages posting same content all over again.

jeanlucas 6y ago
Yet, you have full blown communities with people creating art for their role models / artists. Take like pewdiepie and his subreddit, the creations there are nothing more than amazing, from video to even handcrafted art. Several artists have fun communities like this and they can interact with them directly.
- rm445 6y ago
  Great point. Most people can create an old-school website with a little effort using few or basic tools, but creating something that can host a community is/was much harder. phpbb was about the limit. It's almost an inversion - instead of many community sites, there are many users together on a smaller number of community groups, which are generally built on social platforms such as reddit and Facebook which make it easy to create them. It's not necessarily a bad thing, except that the most invested people in the communities don't have ownership of the platform or the data, so the communities that matter to them are vulnerable to any arbitrary changes in what the platform owners choose to do.
- _fat_santa 6y ago
  It goes even deeper than that. Take the term "X Twitter" or "X Youtube" where X is literally any subject, or group you can think of. I frequent Youtube a ton and I noticed there are distinct communities on there like "Car Youtube" or "Gaming Youtube", hell there's entire communities built up around busting scammers on Instagram (those guys posting with stack of cash and a Lambo). You start watching one channel and realize these guys do colabs with others in that space. Just a few months ago 3-4 Car Youtubers I watch got together and created "CarTrek" which is like a full blown TopGear esque car show.

mrisoli 6y ago

There's good and bad in this. It sucks that we depend on Facebook/Instagram and others to get information about a local business like a restaurant we want to visit. But years ago if you wanted information about a restaurant on the web... was it even there? If they even had a website it was built by the owner's nephew or maybe used some wix template, then if it does exist you're going all over the place to find contact information, opening hours are probably missing, menu might be anything from another page to a download of a photographed PDF. I like the fact that I can go to a social network profile and there's a big button with contact information in the same place for all businesses.

meekrohprocess 6y ago
>But years ago if you wanted information about a restaurant on the web... was it even there? Yes, it was. ~10-20 years ago, local restaurants and businesses would pay high school / college kids a pittance set up a simple website for them. No online ordering, but they would usually have a menu, phone number, and hours. The result was that the pages didn't all look like SquareSpace templates, and a lot of young people got their first leg up into a tech career.

npongratz 6y ago

> Does a restaurant need a website, or a presence on Instagram/Facebook/{delivery app} is enough? I don't trust the platforms you cited, so when I want to call a restaurant and they want my business, they must have a website. Besides, I don't want a third party asserting itself into my relationship with the restaurant.

jason0597 6y ago
Does that mean you won't eat at restaurants who don't have a website?
- ht_th 6y ago
  Possibly, yes. If I am unfamiliar with the restaurant, or I have a question regarding their menu or my dietary restrictions, if they do not have a website with an email address or contact form AND they do not react in reasonable time, I will not eat at that restaurant.
- npongratz 6y ago
  There are a multitude of restaurants. I am personally familiar with many of them, some with websites, others without. That's not the situation I'm writing about. If I am considering patronizing an unfamiliar restaurant, and my only source of information about it is some untrustworthy third party platform, I'm moving on. Like I said, many restaurants exist, I'm losing nothing by going somewhere trustworthy. And again, I cannot emphasize this enough: I do not want some third party asserting itself into my relationship with the restaurant.
  - malodyets 6y ago
    With regard to restaurants, this perspective doesn’t make sense to me, primarily because reviews are found on third party services and not on the restaurant’s website. If I’m going to a new area, I rely on ratings and reviews to know if I want to try the restaurant.
    - 6y ago

6510 6y ago

> they don't need a website anymore. until they get kicked off

6510 6y ago
Sometimes down votes are so hilarious. Whatever nice things one can say about platforms (and there are many) people are going to get kicked off. Of course the majority of the time they did something that was not allowed. No one can be mr perfect 24/7 365 days of the year, the rules can be totally idiotic too of course, at the scale the big platforms work false positives are [sadly] impossible to avoid. But it doesn't matter. The platforms have to do house keeping, its unavoidable. If one deserved to get kicked off is entirely besides the point: It is not your website, you are a guest. Your own website is an entirely different story. You have to break actual laws and you may deserve your day in court. Compared to the cyborg-kangaroo court this is the superior deal. You can down vote me all day long, I have not broken any laws. You cant persecute and silence me for stating the obvious. On HN however this is how things work, you feel the statement lacks effort, is off topic or whatever other reason you can think of and then people get silenced. I sure as hell hope HN doesn't implement an internet kangaroo court room (like wikipedia has, woah the walls of text generated by tiny issues!) but you can expect people not to speak their mind, not share their version of the story, to attempt to live up to your expectations and learn to survive your judgement. This is why you need your own website.

marc_io 6y ago

Sure, it's the easiest way for small businesses, but in doing so, they are giving away too much of their marketing and branding - until they become hostages. Not good, specially for online businesses. It's like selling a product on marketplaces: inevitably, that fateful day comes when the platform decides to change the rules – against your best commercial interests – and the only two options you have are: stay, keep your head down and obey... or leave and start almost from scratch.