Table of Contents
Staying Findable
Staying findable is the practice of keeping a stable, reachable identity across the web's churn: a URL and contact path that survives platforms shutting down, accounts being deleted, and friends losing touch. The dead accounts pile up: “Last online 620 weeks ago” is what happens to the people who never left a forwarding address.
Adapted from Last Online 620 Weeks Ago on brennan.day.
What It Is
A personal domain is the durable locator. Platforms die, instances shut down, and handles get abandoned, but a domain you control can always point to wherever you currently are. Oxford Internet Institute research projects that dead users will eventually outnumber living ones on platforms like Facebook: a growing share of profiles belong to people who can no longer be reached.
The IndieWeb answer is the domain of one's own: own the address, keep the address stable, and let everything else (hosts, platforms, communities) be replaceable infrastructure behind it.
What It Requires
- A URL you own that you treat as permanent. See Hosting & Domains.
- Redundant copies of the things you publish, so the content outlives the host. See The Long Web and Offline Knowledge Preservation.
- A contact path that does not depend on one company: email at your domain, or a listed set of current accounts.
- A way to leave well. When you leave a platform, leave a forwarding address. See Deleting Corporate Social Media.