In my experience, people use it for street cred basically. Whether somewhat disingenuously to 'validate' (sic) poor content by mere association with the 'brand' name (cue Forbes, LinkedIn...), or more genuinely when 'legitimate' authors seek to give exposure to their sharing via the 'brand' platform (e.g. "Our <N> years of exp with tech <X> at shop <B>" by lead figure <I>).

Which is a completely different approach than building one's own business. These platforms can still help drive traffic to a decent website though.

It’s a convenient place to publish the odd posting or two. I’ve also found that there’s some (unwarranted) perceived credibility plus it can be a good place to link that’s not mixed in with random personal stuff.

I use it for professional stuff that needs to be linked to but which isn’t on an official blog property of some sort.

I do keep a personal blog but sometimes cross-post to Medium.

ever since Facebook, youtube and other mega platforms, people seem to forget that a decentralized web also means that you should host your own content. I agree with you and find it sad that everything on internet today is hosted by some of those mega tech companies that dictate their laws and what we can and cannot see.

It's a pleasant writing experience. Don't even have to think about the title... meanwhile for my static site the title torments me because I need to put it there as the file name... of course I could just rename it or whatever but there's cognitive overload here (for me).

Traffic