A lot of people talk about their personal brand, and they don’t have a personal homepage/website/blog/whatever NOT hosted on LinkedIn, Facebook, etc.

Having your own presence is important for your personal brand, because you cannot anticipate what can happen on external services. Policy changes (twitter I’m talking to you), temporary bans or lifetime blocks (I’ve many friends that don’t use Facebook anymore after they’ve lost a lot of time trying to recover a blocked account, with no luck), etc.

There are many free alternatives, I’m hosting my personal homepage on a free Azure Static WebApp created with Hugo. The sources are hosted on GitHub, and I’ve a backup on my PC (and in the cloud), so I can quickly rebuild it or move it somewhere else if/when needed.

Of course, I’m linking my social/books/contacts on my personal home page, so people know where to follow me, but I don’t want to leave my personal brand completely in the hands of some third parties.