Is the idea of a home page on the way out? I've had a "home page" since at
least 1996. But I'm wondering if it is declining. What with things like Facebook and LinkedIn and
so on, there are too many places to look for "identity". But it's really just a social convention, that people and organizations might have a "home page" which is them, which you might sign an email with.
When I sign my email I use http://larry.masinter.net alone. Why include a larger signature block when I can sum it all up in one URL? But I'm doing it less and less. People can find me, just do search.
But I wonder -- is the notion of a "home page" underlying the semantic web's use of a URL to stand for some thing, person or group in the real world?
For example, you might say that there was a link, for a URL U and a thing X between:
* how good the page at the U serves a "home page" for X
* how appropriate U is as a URI for the concept X in RDF
Maybe I am old school, but I still believe you want a home page, because you have reliability and have control over that bit.
ReplyDeleteIf you use any third party (i.e. FB, Google, Linkedin, ...), you will always have the risk that the content you upload does not belong to you anymore (take a read of their T&Cs - in many cases you basically hand over all IP to the provider) or it can be removed at any moment without warning or consent. *Puff*
If I had a home, I want some reliability and would not want it to disappear over night without warning...
And guys this is the Internet, many things can happy here over night or in a years time...
Cheers, Tobias