LinkedIn vs Personal Website: Where to Show What You Are Building Now

For a job search, a LinkedIn profile is enough, and nothing else matches its reach. To show what you are building right now, you need a page of your own. A personal website is the right page if you want your own domain and full control of the layout. A meinpublic map is the right page if you want every project you have going, work and life, shown with its state and its dated history in one look.

This comparison is for builders with several things going at once who are weighing LinkedIn vs personal website and want a fair look at both, plus a third option. The difference in one line: a feed shows moments, a CV polishes the past, a map shows the whole person.

LinkedIn, a personal website and a map, side by side

Compared on	LinkedIn	A personal website	A meinpublic map
Built around	Your jobs, internships and contract positions	Whatever you design	What you are making now: one node per project
Projects	A Projects section; links go in as media	Pages you write and update by hand	Each node has a state and a dated timeline
Work and life	Profile sections for professional life	Your choice	Products, health and family on one map
Reach of its own	More than 1 billion members	None until search finds it	None: meinpublic has no audience to lend you
Address	On linkedin.com	Your own domain	meinpublic.com/handle
Cost	Free; Premium Career from US$39.99 a month	$11.08 a year for a .com; hosting can be free	Reading free; a map is $5 a month or $50 a year
Better for	A job search, hiring, B2B sales	Full control of how you look online	Showing all you do, as it moves

When LinkedIn is the better choice

Choose LinkedIn for a job search or for hiring. About LinkedIn counts more than 1 billion members in more than 200 countries and territories, and its Newsroom says about 8,200 job applications are submitted every minute. The Pew Research Center found that 32% of US adults use LinkedIn (2024 survey). On the hiring side, a 2015 SHRM survey of HR professionals found that 96% of organisations that recruit through social media use LinkedIn, and 73% rate it the most effective channel.

A profile is shaped like a CV. LinkedIn Help says Experience holds jobs, internships and contract positions, and Featured shows samples of your work, such as a post or an uploaded file. LinkedIn Help also lists a Projects section, where links go in as media. The free profile does all this well. Premium Career starts at US$39.99 a month and Premium Business at US$69.99 a month. A meinpublic map is not a job board and does not try to be one.

When a personal website is the better choice

Choose a personal website when you want three things a hosted profile can’t give you:

• Your own domain. A .com costs $11.08 a year at Porkbun, to register and to renew, and the address is yours to keep.
• Full control of the layout. The design is your call, page by page.
• A low running cost. GitHub Pages hosts a site free from a public repository, so the domain can be the only bill.

It matters because people look. Pew found in 2010 that 44% of online adults had searched for someone whose services or advice they wanted. The cost is upkeep: a site says only what you remember to update, and an old projects page reads as current until you fix it.

What a meinpublic map shows instead

A meinpublic map is one public page per person, built around what they are making now. Every project is a node with a dated timeline, and its distance from the centre shows its state:

• Idea on the outer ring, for something wanted and not started;
• In progress and parked on the middle ring, parked with its reason;
• Live and finished on the inner ring;
• Let go back on the outer ring, grey, with the reason kept.

Work and life sit on the same map, because both are part of who you are. There are no likes and no follower counts. Nothing is ranked. A stall shows as plainly as a launch, which is why the essay Parked Is Not Failed argues it is worth keeping.

The founder’s own map shows the shape. Tiến’s map on the About page, dated 16 Oct 2026, holds 7 nodes in 4 areas:

• Builder: three products in progress, meinpublic, maptoact and cendora;
• Health: Reach 60 kg;
• Family: Father: good habits, and Father: a nice life;
• Content: a Tech, farm & edu channel that is still an idea.

A CV would list none of the last four.

Progress brings happiness. I want a healthy place where I can share my journey, see other people’s journeys and help them with theirs.

Tien Doan, founder of meinpublic

Reading a map is free. Keeping one costs $5 a month or $50 a year after a 30-day trial, and the first 300 founding members get their first year free. Two things to know before choosing it. The app is not open yet, so today the only real map is Tiến’s. And a map lives at an address on meinpublic.com, not on a domain you own, with no audience of its own to bring you readers. Many builders will keep LinkedIn for work, and put a link to their map on it.