Weekly Poll: Do You Own Your Own Domain?

After nearly 2 decades of commercial internet, domain names are as important as ever. In the late ’90′s, Aol keywords started popping up on business signs, and today you’re likely to see a company’s Twitter @username or Facebook page on marketing material. So many people do a Google search for everything that they paste domain names into a Google box and then click the link that Google shows. Still, through it all, domain names have remained one of the most important things a business can own online.

It’s not just businesses, though. Many individuals own their own domain to keep their own personal blog or portfolio site with their own identity. Having your own domain makes it much easier to move to a new site and bring your traffic along with you. Plus, you can run your own email services on your own domain, or use your domain with Google Apps for a personalized Gmail experience. That way, even if you want to go use another email service, you’ll always have the same email address and won’t have to get your friends to update their address books.

Most of us have at least some web presence, and I was curious how many of our readers own domains. I personally own 3 domains right now, and use my own techinch.com domain for my personal site and as my main email. Do you use your own domain for your own site, and do you use it for email as well, or are mainstream services sufficient for you?