Hi All,

have you wondered and ever thought of its pros and cons of having online biz by just using multiply, facebook and other social networking sites without having a site with your own domain itself?

Share some of your thoughts here as i would love to see what is your opinion and reason of approach to this vastly used method or marketing and doing biz.

Here is somewhat i could think of

Pros - Multiply and facebook are free, creating website using blogspot and bloggers, etc. No cost of setting up and running it online.

Cons - Overly saturated community with many people onto the same things. Free webs means you will not have control of your sub-domain names and prone of losing it in many possible scenarios such as constant report of abuse in some case of sabotage, account got hacked and losing the identity permanently and more. Not to mention some technical limitation such as SEO and other forms of optimization that cannot take place in a free web. Lower chances of getting index by search engines.

my 2 cents..

PROS :
1. Easily available
2. Cost-effective (basically FREE)
3. Easy setup (using FREE readily available themes)

CONS :
1. Does not show professionalism
2. Unable to create own branding
3. Not unique design / personalised

I think you also have highlighted that most of the people who are already on blogspot and livejournal are reluctant because they already have the content in their current blog. They worry of not able to port over their contents in an event where they need to move and prefer to stay where they are now.

But have anyone question what if blogspot or livejournal closes? Its not impossible as we have seen popular decade long free hosting like Xoom.com, NBC.com, Angelfire.com, TripodAsia.com which already close their free services despite being around for more than 5 years.