Chris over on Copyblogger has a great post titled Are You Someone’s User-Generated Content?, commenting on bloggers who have been abandoning their personal blogs in favor of social sites like Facebook and Twitter. Here’s a key quote from Chris:
…people who abandon blogging have gone from developing a digital asset of their own that could have real value, to becoming someone else’s user-generated content.
The phrase “user generated content” is kicked around a lot (perhaps too much), but in this context I think Chris makes a great point. I’ve seen many blogs where the person is now doing updates on a micro site like Tumblr, or Twitter. Maybe for those just doing personal updates (like a journal), that will work, but for a true personal site you need to control your own content and have it hosted on a domain you control.