Getting a cheap website does not get you known. Plus you have the hassle of needing to manage said website, overhaul it every now and then, keep it fresh. Not many people have the knowledge, or the time, to do that. Then there's the fact that nobody can Like your website. You have to fight PageRank to get yourself up in the search engines and become visible. That's hard work, without any guarantee of success.
FaceBook is practical, free and easy. There is literally no other platform that can get you known faster, and getting Likes is easy-peasy.
I hate FaceBook, I hate Zuckerberg, but I am not blinded by that hate. I acknowledge that FaceBook is here to stay, much as I would prefer it to die, and it is useful to a great many people in more ways than one.
Indispensable ? Probably not, but in the current lazy state of our society, it is pretty much the easiest option, so it wins. Every time.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
