The thing is - other providers exists, it's just they are not as convenient as the walled gardens. That's a big part of the challenge. You can own your blog on

The thing is - other providers exists, it's just they are not as convenient as the walled gardens. That's a big part of the challenge. You can own your blog on your own domain and site, but you need to be able to set that up, not forget to renew your domain, potentially deal with availability issues if the site goes down, etc. Compare that to basically just putting your content somewhere where someone else worries about all those things. It's a trade-off that folks are willing to make, and for the "average user" (definition can vary depending on service/area) that is a very straightforward choice. I just hope that more folks understand what rights they give up by becoming attached to one platform as their publishing medium.