Some nice quotes on what the IndieWeb is about, from Desmond’s article Your Website Is Your Castle.
In a nutshell:
At the heart of the IndieWeb is an attempt to unify the ideas behind personal websites, blogs and social networks, but in a manner consistent with how the world wide web operates.
Your website acts much like your wall on Facebook or your timeline on Twitter – it’s your personal soapbox, your castle on the web.
[…]one recreates, in a decentralized manner, the kinds of online interactions one has come to expect from private social networks.