An online room of one's own ...

What are the basic ingredients in creating an online space of one's own? In the past, when a room required materials -- wood, plaster, nails, roofing, and so forth -- the question was one of cost, of economy; Thoreau kept track of every nail used to build his cabin on Walden Pond. Now, one can built a fairly spacious dwelling for no cost whatsoever -- aside from one's time! -- but as the choices grow wider the process gets murkier. Do you want, or need, to "blog"? Do you want or need to "share"? What streets of information or social activity do you want your online doors to open into, or out from? Who would you like your neighbors to be? And do you feel comfortable handing advertising signage on your online dwelling-place, or would you pay a certain premium not to have ads? And, once your home exists, what do you want to do with it? Who do you want to "stop by"? How often do you yourself want to "be" there?

And maybe you don't need to start from scratch -- don't you already have some places online where you tend to go, or have made some sort of nook or cranny for yourself? Most online services offer some kind of "hub" where you can pull "yourself" together; Google has your Google+ profile page (though their service has never really taken off); Yahoo! offers you a "MyYahoo!" home; and of course Facebook offers the ever-changing streams of one's Facebook Profile page. But writers, generally prefer a more sculpted space, with fewer graphical distractions; for them, sevices such as WordPress, Blogger, or Medium often provide what's needed.

Medium, which was started by the folks who brought you Twitter, offers and elegant online space for writing, though at the expense of a certain degree of uniformity. Most of the writing there is only findable by those who look for it (you can see my page here), though the site does send out a daily e-mail with recommended posts. A few years ago, Wattpad was launched in Canada, with the endorsement of heavy hitters such as Margaret Atwood. It's mostly read on mobile devices, and is (perhaps understandably) most hospitable to flash fiction and other short forms. And, although it's functional only once a year, the NaNoWriMo site -- set up for National Novel Writing Month in November -- has been a starting place for plenty of published fiction, including my own novel. Still, not everyone is impressed; as one critic put it, "far more money can be made out of people who want to write novels than out of people who want to read them."

So what's been your experience? Do you have a regular online presence or 'home' -- or do you prefer to work toward getting your writing published in more traditional ways? Have you blogged? Commented on other blogs? Are there particular sites that you go to regularly to see what others are writing? Published online? How satisfying has the experience been? Your thoughts below.