In 2015, I started going live every day: my "Walk with Me" sessions through Philadelphia, streamed to anyone who wanted to come along. The audience grew faster than I could have planned — over 75,000 followers on Periscope, tuning in daily, asking questions, becoming a genuine community with a direct line to me. Instant feedback, real connections, worldwide.
Then Periscope shut down.
Overnight, I lost access to all 75,000 of them. No export, no forwarding address, no goodbye. Every one of those relationships lived on a platform I didn't control — and when the platform ended, so did my access to the people in it.
Rented land
That loss taught me the sentence I now repeat to every business owner who will listen: social media platforms are rented land. You can build on them — you should build on them — but you have little control and no ownership. The audience you "have" on any platform is an audience the platform lets you borrow, on terms it can change or end at any time.
A digital homebase is the opposite: the place where you fully control the relationship with your customers. Your website, owned properly — your domain, your content, your customer list. The ground under it is yours. No algorithm change can bury you there, and no shutdown can take the people who've given you their email address.
The rule that follows: build your audience wherever they are, but move the relationship home.
Listening built the business the platform couldn't take
There's a second lesson inside the Periscope story that gets less attention. My original plan for those streams was teaching people how to create online courses. But my audience kept lighting up at something else — my soap-making hobby. The questions, the enthusiasm, the "can I buy that?" all pointed away from my plan and toward theirs.
So I listened, and pivoted, and that responsiveness launched a thriving soap business. The platform disappeared, but what I'd learned from the audience — what they wanted, who they were — came with me, because insight, unlike followers, is portable.
That's the quiet function of a homebase: it's where audience attention becomes something you keep — a subscriber, a customer record, a lesson about demand.
What lives at your homebase
A homebase isn't just an address — it's the body of content and capability that makes the address worth visiting. The content layer gives every kind of audience a way in: articles that answer the questions your customers actually ask, a podcast or video for the ones who'd rather listen than read, deeper resources — guides, eBooks, email courses — that trade real value for a subscription, and a newsletter, because the email list is the one audience you own outright.
And beneath the content sits the working layer: the systems that let interest become a transaction — a storefront if you sell products, booking if you sell time, automated delivery if you sell digital goods. Successful streaming was never just pressing "go live"; the orders, scheduling, and follow-up all needed somewhere to happen. A homebase with content but no systems is a brochure. With both, it's a business.
Your presence can extend well beyond the website itself — but every extension should point home.
The question that matters
If you're a small business owner, ask yourself plainly: do you truly own your digital presence? If your entire audience lives on platforms you rent, my story is a preview — not a possibility, a preview. Platforms end. Algorithms turn. Accounts get locked.
Your digital presence is your business lifeline. Make sure it's firmly in your own hands — and start before you need to.
Frequently asked questions
What is a digital homebase?
The online presence you own and control — your website, domain, content, and customer list — as opposed to rented presence on social platforms, which can change their terms or disappear along with your audience.
Why shouldn't I rely only on social media for my business?
Because the platform owns the relationship, not you. Zakia built 75,000 followers on Periscope and lost access to all of them overnight when it shut down. Social is for reach; the relationship belongs at home, on your list and your site.
What should my digital homebase include?
A content layer that earns visits and subscriptions — articles, audio or video, deeper resources, a newsletter — and a systems layer that completes transactions: a storefront, booking, or automated delivery, matched to what you sell.
Not sure whether your foundation would survive a platform disappearing? That's the first thing worth finding out: find your starting point.