I recently asked myself a simple question: where does my professional identity actually live?

For many years, the easy answer would have been LinkedIn. It is where people search. It is where professional updates appear. It is where colleagues, customers, partners, team members, and old friends can find each other. It is useful, and I still think it has a place.

But I also realized that a professional identity should not depend entirely on a feed.

This is not a complaint about LinkedIn. I am not leaving it in protest. I am not trying to make a dramatic point about social platforms. I am simply making a practical long-term decision: LinkedIn will remain a basic discovery profile for me, while my main professional content will live on my own website.

That website is now ggnagarkar.com.

The Realization

Social platforms are useful, but they are rented land.

That is not a negative statement. It is just how platforms work. A platform gives you reach, discovery, network effects, and convenience. In return, the platform controls the format, the feed, the search experience, the recommendation logic, and often the useful life of your content.

That tradeoff is fine for announcements, lightweight updates, tagging people, and being found. But it is not ideal as the primary home for long-term professional identity.

My work has now accumulated across many areas: product building, practical AI systems, DevOps and SRE automation, cloud architecture, patents, talks, writing, founder work, and systems I have built hands-on. Some of that work is recent. Some of it goes back years. Some of it is better understood as a timeline. Some of it needs context. Some of it should be searchable. Some of it should be connected to projects, patents, companies, and ideas.

A social profile is not the best place to carry all of that structure.

Why Not Make LinkedIn the Primary Place?

LinkedIn is still useful, but it is not the place where I want the complete version of my professional work to live.

There are a few practical reasons.

First, algorithms decide visibility. A post may reach people today and disappear tomorrow. That is fine for updates, but not ideal for important ideas or reference material.

Second, content becomes hard to find later. Even when a post did well, finding it six months or two years later can be painful. A professional archive should not depend on memory, scrolling, or platform search.

Third, profiles are platform-controlled. The layout, emphasis, sections, and discovery behavior can change. Again, that is normal for any platform. But it means the professional story is always being shaped by someone else's product decisions.

Fourth, connections do not equal an owned audience. A network is valuable, but it is not the same as having a durable place where people can return, search, cite, and understand the work in context.

Finally, professional identity should not depend on one platform. I have spent enough time building systems to know that important things need some level of ownership, portability, and resilience. A professional presence is no different.

Why Keep LinkedIn At All?

I am still keeping LinkedIn.

People search there. Team members may want to tag me. Customers and partners may look me up there before a conversation. Investors, founders, engineers, and old colleagues often use it as a directory. It remains a useful profile and discovery surface.

So I do not see this as LinkedIn versus website.

I see it as LinkedIn for discovery, and my website for depth.

LinkedIn can tell someone that I exist, what I am broadly doing, and where to find me. But if someone wants the fuller picture, they should land on the website.

That is a cleaner model.

Why The Website Becomes The Center

The website gives me something a feed cannot: structure.

On ggnagarkar.com, I can keep a clearer and more durable record of the work:

  • About
  • Experience
  • Projects
  • Things I have built
  • Patents
  • Writing
  • Activity feed
  • Talks
  • Contact

Each of these deserves a proper home. Not everything should be compressed into a profile section or a short post.

For example, a patent should have context and source links. A project should explain the role, timeline, and outcome. A build note should capture architecture, scale, reliability, cost, DevOps, and lessons learned. A blog post should have a canonical URL, metadata, and a place in an archive. A talk should not be buried inside a timeline where nobody can find it later.

The website lets all of this connect.

It also helps with search. Not just search engines, but people searching for context. AI systems and assistants are also becoming a new discovery surface. If my work is going to be summarized, cited, or understood by machines, I would rather give them a clear canonical source than scattered fragments across feeds.

What I Want The Website To Become

I want the website to become a living professional archive.

Not a brochure. Not a perfect personal brand artifact. Not a place filled with polished but empty claims.

I want it to be useful.

It should explain what I am building. It should preserve older work that still matters. It should collect writing properly. It should connect projects to experience. It should make patents and public activity easier to verify. It should be a searchable knowledge base around my professional work, not just a static profile.

This matters more as the work becomes broader.

When you are building companies, products, AI systems, cloud platforms, DevOps automation, and architecture-heavy solutions, context matters. A one-line update does not explain the thinking. A feed does not preserve the shape of the work. A platform profile does not always show what is most important.

A website gives me the room to document things with a little more care.

My Publishing Model Going Forward

The model is simple.

Website first. Social platforms second.

If I write something important, the canonical version should live on the website. If I document a project, it should live on the website. If I publish a build note, it should live on the website. If I want something to be discoverable for years, it should live on the website.

LinkedIn will stay shallow and practical. It will be a discovery profile, a tagging surface, and a way for people to reach the website.

I may still share links on LinkedIn. I may share some thoughts on X. I may use a newsletter later. But those channels should point back to the canonical version.

That is the difference: social platforms can distribute the work, but they should not be the only place where the work exists.

Closing

This is a small change, but I think it is the right one.

As a founder and builder, I care about ownership, durability, clarity, and systems that keep working over time. My professional identity should follow the same principles.

LinkedIn remains useful. I will keep it clean, basic, and discoverable.

But the main home for my work will be my own website.

I am not leaving the internet. I am moving my professional home to a place I own.