Do people actually do thjis?
 

Title type... ooops.... fat fingers!

So I get my monthly account summary from GoDaddy today.

It is asking me to point my domains to my facebook or twitter page. WTF? Is that what some people do for websites these days? Buy a domain and point it to their social media page?

Wow... how fucking cheap can you get? I mean there are SO many free CMS programs out there you can build a site in minutes.

I mean it's bad enough people use a blog program to make a business site but to just link to social media.

Fucking lazy!!!:mad:

:1orglaugh:1orglaugh

I dropped facebook 6 years ago... might still have twitter... maybe. LOL

I suppose the mainstream world would take advantage of that since many are attempting to start home business's and use facebook to reach their audience. If you do your SEO homework you'll find that there are a few large companies who's traffic are 2% or less coming from social media. Sadly I've seen other's rely solely on it though I do understand why when budgets are limited as is experience.

Depends on the business. If the business relies entirely on the local community for their customers - ie no products that can be shipped or online services - then website hosting might be an unnecessary expense/headache that can be avoided.

For example, I would think a food-truck would benefit much more from social media than an actual website.

OR

If you're in the process of starting a business, have a great name and the domain is currently available and you want to lock it in, but you haven't officially launched yet, then this might be a good course of action.

My perspective is that I've seen social media giants come and go. The current ones will go too. Who wants to spend a dozen years building out their business presence on the next MySpace or LiveJournal?

The "correct" flow, IMO, is exactly the other way. You build and maintain your own web presence, on your own domain, using cheap turnkey services if that's what floats your boat. And all of your social media points to it. Your business may live and breathe and do 98% of its business on FaceBook, and that's fine if you're making bank. But you always have a full business presence that you own, where your branding and a working core of business function lives (even if it's just the phone number for your towing business or whatever). So on that day in 2027 when your ops manager pops a vidtext on your eyescroll telling you "Facebook just booted [our industry] entirely off the platform because those terrortroll guys from NoviJapansk were money laundering through our competitors" it's not a nuke. It's just another business challenge in a lifetime of 'em.

I remember in the MySpace days there was people making good money creating "themes" for profiles or whatever it was back then. Those people are out of business.

However, I think Facebook is here to stay. I am on all of the platforms and there is only one that has something for everyone, business, personal, shopping, community, family. I don't go to TikTok to find out about local events near me or look at images of a local restaurant's food or menu.

You may be right. I wouldn't put big bets against you being right. However...

Back when MySpace I was doing a lot of my leisure reading in the business press. Lots and lots of people thought MySpace was eternal, too big to fail, going to rule the social media world forever. I don't know how many of those people actually lived their social lives or organized their businesses around it, like indy bands were doing. But for lots of people, the decline of MySpace was very hard to visualize. And yet, decline it did.

Right now, the decline of Facebook is very hard to visualize. I can't really see a plausible scenario for it. My historical view tells me that all hegemonic empires look unassailable. But in the end, barbarians eat every last one of them. Is Facebook different? Is Facebook immune to history? Maybe...

Put simplistically, say you start off a small business selling something you make, something 'crafty' - Like little decorations made with glass found washed up and smoothed on the beach...

You may start by posting pics of your art to face book pages, and before long, you realise that you want to have a page on facebook, dedicated to your stuff. So you get it, and the url is facebook.com/CSsCrapFromTheBeach well thats fine if you are sending the link to people already ON facebook, but what happens when you are sellig your shit at a local craft fair?

Someone asks you for your website address and you have to tell them a facebook page? Doesn't sound very good. But if you can put BeachArtsandCrafts.com on a business card, and then it TAKES them to your facebook page... Why Not?

At least as a stopover until you are big enough to warrant your own site?

And if facebook 'Disappeared' Well you have lost your facebook page, but not your URL that you are known for and is on literature etc. Then just get a wix site for free etc...

I dont think its that unusual...

A lot of models do this.

They can change where the domain points, as social networks change though.

godaddy is woke, I would stay away myself

However, I think Facebook is here to stay.
- good chance the gov will break them up...

A problem I had as a publicist was someone would say they were an "Online Magazine" reviewing DVDs, but their domain forwarded to a MySpace page, with less than 1,000 friends.

As someone who literally built their first site with HTML for Dummies, I couldn't fathom the stupidity of someone who considered themselves a professional online publisher, yet couldn't build a simple web page.

Obviously, things have gotten more complicated (and good bye DVD screeners!). I'm grateful for CMS. But come on. Sherry and I even understood how to do tables. If you can sign up for an Instagram or Twitter account, you can at least understand a wordpress blog.

This is quite popular, its a permanent way to send traffic to your social media page without being tied to a single platform. For example, an Onlyfans model can buy her name as a domain and redirect to her Onlyfans page. Down the road, if she moves to another platform, its just a simple registrar change.
WG

I'd say that only insane people buy GoDaddy domains these days...

Why would you say that? Cheap domains. I would never host with them, but just buying the name I do not see a problem.

Buying? :1orglaugh:1orglaugh That's a joke... more like rental... just like everything else these days. You pay and pay and really don't own it.

Kinda what I thought.

The rest was just a rant from someone who doesn't understand the market today, but to be expected on GFY.

It is sometimes easier to reach your audience with a facebook page than it is with a website, though I still cringe when I see that.

I still laugh at seeing the link to MySpace here.

I thought there were pushing their own parking.