mmuller: Take a look at what Phoenix (Discord) asked for. Say I have a website data.com and I've been told that data.com is free to use. That's great for me, but because I'm nervous that data.com could be taken away from me at any moment I prefer to use a distributed pointer (which also happens to be cheaper then paying for a domain name mypermanentlink.com). In this case IPNS is a great pointer system to use.

I could decide to have an IPNS pointer pointed at /ipfs/QmLatest, update my IPNS record every time the data changes, and push my updates to the data.com server. However, if I want to ensure constant availability then I always need to have my ipfs node online (what if no one else feels like redistributing my content?). Additionally, if I happen to be the only node hosting the data then I incur all the bandwidth costs (and I'll tell you in most of the US, including major cities, upload speeds are terrible).

Now, if I have /ipns/QmMe point at /http/data.com then data.com eats all the bandwidth costs, and I don't even really need to have an ipfs node online (well if I'm using the DHT for IPNS resolution then I need to republish my records once a day). Is this a fully distributed web that can take advantages of everything IPNS has to offer? No. It does have a niche fulfilling a user's goals though. Note: There are some interesting github issues (e.g. https://github.com/libp2p/notes/issues/11) surrounding how we could hint that /ipfs/QmLatest might be available at a particular place outside of the IPFS network (e.g. /http/data.com).