What is your website for?

With more of your content being published directly to the platforms, why do you need a website?

“The idea won’t be to start a website, I think that idea will be dead. There will still be websites hopefully but the web, the individual website, isn’t going to matter.”

That’s what Medium founder Ev Williams said at ISQUARED2015.

Instead, said Williams, "You’re doing it on one of a handful of platforms."

Something about that future brings to mind Apple's TV commercial, "1984", and the book that inspired it, complete with mindless hordes marching to the strained drones of a Big Brother figure. The only thing missing from this picture, you might think, is the Thought Police — until you realise that role is filled by the algorithms these platforms use to decide what, and what not, to show you.

So, was Williams right? Are we just going through the motions, waiting for publishers to cede control wholesale to the monopoly platforms? Is the future of the web a handful of platforms where content is published, discovered and shared?

This doesn't need to be an either/or situation. The reach offered by social media and other platforms is such that publishers would be missing a huge opportunity if they were to abstain from distributing stories and other content via those networks.

However, by focusing exclusively on the platforms at the cost of neglecting your own website, you are arguably much more at risk of becoming irrelevant in the long run.

In choosing to publish to the platforms, you're pushing content in a lowest common denominator format: you and every other publisher are restricted to playing within the confines of what is allowed by Facebook Instant, Apple News, and so on. You're playing in their sandpit, and you're not allowed to bring your own toys. That's fine. You're getting your message out and maybe you're even being heard by some of the people you're trying to reach.

So what is your website for?

It seems an odd question to be asking decades after the web was created, in an era when everyone and their dog is online. Surely the answer to this question is well-established? 

The fact is, the reasons for starting a website of your own have shifted dramatically, and for individuals who want a place to voice their ideas and concerns, Williams was probably right. A platform like Medium enables you to get up and running very quickly and to be part of a community that doubles as your audience. Your posts will look just the same as those written by the others in that community — that is, you'll be delegating the look and feel of your website to Medium — but it doesn't matter.

But for major publishers and brands, being part of an online community is not enough. When audiences moved from print to digital, it heralded an unbundling of content. This process was accelerated by the advent of social networks. In this environment, distribution costs trend to zero, attracting myriad players, creating  an abundance of advertising space and consequently putting downward pressure on the value of that space. In a space like this, the temptation is to rely on platforms to bring a larger audience — but that strategy fails when everyone does it. Back to square one.

Sustainably successful online publishers will be those who distinguish themselves not just by the words on a page, but through the whole experience they offer to their audience. They must bring to bear the entire arsenal of technologies and interactions the web affords to deliver something different. But that isn't possible when you're playing in the confines of the platforms.

Here is where your website can excel: creating unique reading experiences. With more of your content going to social media platforms, use your website to deliver an experience that is different to everyone else's. And you can do that, because having your own website means you can do what you want. You're not locked into the platforms' innovation cycles. You can experiment with new forms of storytelling. You can bring in third party technologies to create experiences for your audience that they can't get from the platforms. That's what your website is for.

In the future, you may publish less frequently to your own website but, when you do, it will be unique, thoughtfully designed, premium experiences and stories that your audience can't get elsewhere.

This ‘premium experience’ approach means you'll be spending more time and resources creating each page or story on your website — but, you'll also be doing fewer of them. You'll continue to publish versions of these stories and other material to social platforms, but your own website is where you will differentiate yourself from the crowd.

The Buzzfeed/Facebook experience is a great one, but that's Buzzfeed's game plan and Facebook's user experience. The rest of us have to figure out something new. Your own website, where you have control, affords you the space and flexibility to experiment.

I'd like to close by returning to 1984. Arguably, that advertisement is orders of magnitude more relevant today than it was four decades ago, where Steve Jobs cast IBM in the role of Big Brother: