I have blogged on the free Wordpress platform for years, and have purposely not moved it to a self-hosted platform (although I do have a website I could incorporate it into) because I like the internal 'follower' system and have linked up with lots of fellow bloggers that way, and because I it was easy and low maintenance for me. It also feels less commercial and intimate than most self-hosted blogs, which suited my purposes. I may finally port to self-hosted this year, I am still trying to decide - the downside is that all my followers/subscribers will have to resubscribe, so I may lose some.