Why websites? - from anna - pckt

Why websites? - from anna - pckt

Why websites?<br>Personal websites as an atproto onboarding strategy

anna 🍉☀️⛵Jul 28, 2026

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If you follow me in any kind of microblogging context, you know my two loves and passions are: (1) Germ and (2) personal websites—in particular, personal websites that are free!

Lately, I've been having a whole bunch of conversations about personal websites with people who have no idea what atproto is. And from these conversations, I'm convinced that there is a huge Atmosphere-sized hole in the personal website market. Furthermore, I think we can use that as leverage to bring people into the open social world.

Who wants a website, anyways?

The masses are not necessarily clamoring for a website. So what am I on about?

Well, my target audience for websites is: people who want to be findable.

Findable, not discoverable. I think social media platforms are still undefeated for discoverability. (The exception, I suppose, is having great SEO and optimizing for agentic search, to make your website itself discoverable.)

But a lot of people just want to be findable. What should I put on my business cards? On my resume? In my playbill bio? On my grant application? What do I say when I'm talking to someone about my work, and they ask, "Where can I find you?"

The people I'm talking to who want websites are mostly artists. Journalists, furniture designers, photographers, tattoo artists, puppeteers, actors, costume designers, writers, directors, musicians.

And there are also businesses. People who need a virtual storefront! Because I love artists so much, the people I've talked to in this category are also artists—artists who are selling workshops and classes. But we can imagine this extending past the art world!

Right now I'm watching people use traditional social media platforms for findability and discoverability. But they're unhappy on traditional social media platforms! And I think we can win over the findability market by making websites easy and free. My proposal is: let's offer free atproto websites to capture the audience that wants to be findable... and then leverage that growth to boost the Atmosphere's attractiveness as a route for discoverability.

So... let's get into it!

Why are we stuck using traditional social media to be findable?

Many people still aim to be discoverable—to go viral, to gain followers, or to increase their reach among strangers. But on traditional social media platforms, discoverability comes with major risk! These platforms are very clearly and obviously prioritizing growth and engagement over the safety of creators with marginalized identities. So being discoverable is scary, and it's also hard to achieve viral success, even if that's something you're gunning for!

(Discoverability ≠ virality, and there are, of course, safer and friendlier ways to achieve discoverability. Let's do it in the Atmosphere!)

Needless to say, in the traditional social media landscape, discoverability is suuuper hit or miss. So, my artist friends are mostly aiming to just be findable —to friends and family, to friends of friends, to clients, to potential collaborators, to randos they've met once in person.

Okay, so great! Findability. That's a lower bar to clear than findability and discoverability. But somehow we're alllllllll stiiiillllllllll usinggggggg Innsstaaagrammmmm. WHYYYYYYY???

Almost everyone I know is "trying to quit Instagram." Many people have removed the app from their phone, relegating their usage to the clunky browser version. But I only know of a few people who have actually deactivated their accounts. Worse, several of my lifelong-social-media-hating friends have recently felt the need to create Instagram accounts to keep up in their artistic fields. (Instagram, unfortunately, is still LinkedIn For Artists. Much to the chagrin of artists.)

The zeitgeist is on our (atproto's) side—it's increasingly common knowledge that the big social media platforms trap you, scrutinize you, and wring you out for data and engagement. But the activation energy to switch platforms is often lacking.

Because traditional social media is:

Free<br>Very easy to use<br>Holding hostage our entire network of weak ties (loose acquaintances—friends from summer camp, high school classmates, the person standing next to you at that concert that one time—who we rarely talk to but who we will maybe never be able to find ever again if we delete this app, and that would stink!)

(This list is not in comparison to Atmosphere apps, which are also generally free and easy to use. It is in comparison to traditional website builders. Bear with me!)

Furthermore, for someone to adopt a new (mobile) social media app, they need to:

Download a new app<br>Convince all their friends to download the same new app<br>(Or, in a networking context:) Convince someone they've just met, in this very conversation, to download the same new app,...