HoweyahA professional profile on a networking platform and a personal page at your own domain can end up showing almost the same information — your role, your experience, your projects. So it's fair to ask: if the content is similar, does the address really matter?
It does, and the reason is ownership, not decoration.
Whose address is it, actually
A profile URL usually looks something like platform.com/in/your-name-4f8c2. Even the tidy version is still, structurally, a page inside someone else's platform, at someone else's domain. The platform decides the layout, the features, what's visible, and what changes next quarter. None of that is a criticism of any specific platform — it's just what "a profile" structurally is.
A domain works differently. yourname.cv is registered to you. Nobody else's product roadmap, redesign, or policy change touches it. That's the entire distinction: not better or worse content, just a different answer to "who is this address ultimately accountable to."
Three practical differences
You control what's on it and how it's organized. A profile's layout is the same shape for every user on the platform. A page at your own domain can be organized around what actually matters for you specifically — which project goes first, how much space your experience gets versus your projects, what language it's in.
It's the address, not a username. Compare saying "search my name on the platform" to saying "it's ahmedali.cv." One requires the other person to go somewhere else and search; the other is a complete instruction on its own.
It travels with you. If you change your role, your industry, or which platforms you're active on, a domain in your name doesn't need to move. It's not tied to any one platform's continued existence or relevance.
This isn't an either/or
None of this means abandoning a networking profile — it means recognizing what each is actually for. A profile is useful for being discoverable inside a specific network and for the connections that live there. A personal domain is useful as the canonical version — the one link you'd put on a business card, a CV footer, or a WhatsApp message, that says exactly who it's about and stays that way regardless of what any platform changes next.
Plenty of people who send yourname.cv in an application still keep their profile as-is. The domain is the front door; the profile is one of several rooms.
Where this matters most
The gap is widest in exactly the moment a job search happens: an application, a first WhatsApp message to a recruiter, a line in an email signature. In each of those, you're not asking someone to go search for you — you're handing them the address directly. That's the specific use case a .cv domain is built for, and it's why we built Howeyah around your CV first, not a generic template. If you're deciding whether it's worth registering your name now, What Is a .cv Domain? covers exactly how that registration works.
The short version
Content can overlap. Ownership doesn't. A domain in your name is the one address in your career that isn't a room in someone else's house — and if your name is still available, it's worth checking before it isn't.