The Significance of Personal Websites in the Age of SNS & AI

The changing times of media and unchanging ideals

Unable to sleep at midnight, I came across a translated and reposted article on WeChat, saying that building a personal website is useless in this era. The main arguments are: 1. Users no longer use search engines; 2. Operating personal accounts is easier; 3. SEO optimization has polluted search engines; 4. AI search has replaced the above two media.

I have to admit that web pages and social media do have these problems. This article, which is a complete translation and repost without any personal processing, is a clear example. Polluting truly valuable content for traffic (and ads) is a problem that exists in every era. For example, the notorious (?) "Yilin" and "Gushihui". And fighting against this information is an unchanging topic in every era. In the print media era, we hoped to create a media with content and value; in the social media (streaming media) era, we hope to operate an account that outputs meaningful opinions and knowledge. (This is an ideal)

The significance of websites

The most basic significance of building a website is to achieve structured content and interaction on top of the content. A prominent category is various functional websites (such as my PsychoScales) and portfolio websites (artists' personal websites). These websites' content hopes to transcend being framed within video frames, mixed with other different videos, and then presented to readers. More importantly, readers have the motivation to open this website, to see branches and connections of the website content leaping out of the frame, and even to interact with the website and the author.

Oh yes, one big difference between websites and social media is the user's "search" action—motivation. When readers want to search for certain information, we happen to be able to respond to them. What a wonderful thing that is.

In the AI era, the influence of websites seems to have returned. The websites cited by AI search are often web pages (Doubao also seems to have Douyin short videos), which gives website content a new opportunity.

OIer's blog culture

When participating in informatics competitions, everyone wrote blogs. The most famous ones are, for example, senior hzwer and senior Pion1eer. Everyone recorded their learning experiences in blogs, every new knowledge point and unsolved problem. These records are not only the history of one's own progress, but also continuously help students on the same path.

Why does blog culture last longer in the informatics circle? (Actually, I don't have a good answer either) I guess it's related to a habit of "precipitation" and the ideals of the early internet.

I am a leftist, and I believe knowledge should belong to all humanity. Students learning OI may differ in degree, but everyone is on the path of common progress. Those who have the desire to progress should receive corresponding support; knowledge is for exchange.

I also think this way when making PsychoScales, so for content I haven't paid for myself, I chose to open it without thresholds (PsychoScalesOrg), and for the part where I collected data, I paid to provide AI interpretation. (Off-topic) These editing efforts (I don't add ads), I think many are because there is no way to thank the providers of knowledge I obtained on the internet. It is my obligation to share my knowledge with everyone. This reminds me of the "subtitle group" culture, where those enthusiasts who produce subtitles for free also do so because they are grateful that others have produced free content and hope to give back to society.