The problem with "web2", big tech, call it whatever you like, is not where you host things. Whether you host your own website on your personal desktop or in the cloud, it does nothing to break the power of big tech.
The issue is discoverability. Your content is to be found in Google search, the main social networks and/or app stores. Or you simply do not exist for the world. The gate keepers are there and do not care how you host things.
If we take a very gross average, a typical website may have some 60-70% organic traffic (Google search), 20% from social networks, 5-10% paid traffic depending on your ad budget, and the rest is direct traffic.
So 90-95% of your traffic comes from gate keepers. "Small web" does nothing to change or break this. Who cares where your server is?
Small web equally doesn't mention anything about monetization, the other big issue for publishers.
To sum up, web2 sucks for publishers. You fully rely on gatekeepers for visibility and traffic and it's near impossible to monetize. Mostly because users don't want to pay for anything.
To users, web2 is pretty great. They like having a handful of apps as portals to pretty much everything. They aren't going back to RSS readers or "surf" a thousand individual websites.
That's only true if you want "big web" vistor stats. You don't need discoverability for a personal website, because the only people that would be interested would be people that know you - and for them, you just email a link.
The issue is discoverability. Your content is to be found in Google search, the main social networks and/or app stores. Or you simply do not exist for the world. The gate keepers are there and do not care how you host things.
If we take a very gross average, a typical website may have some 60-70% organic traffic (Google search), 20% from social networks, 5-10% paid traffic depending on your ad budget, and the rest is direct traffic.
So 90-95% of your traffic comes from gate keepers. "Small web" does nothing to change or break this. Who cares where your server is?
Small web equally doesn't mention anything about monetization, the other big issue for publishers.
To sum up, web2 sucks for publishers. You fully rely on gatekeepers for visibility and traffic and it's near impossible to monetize. Mostly because users don't want to pay for anything.
To users, web2 is pretty great. They like having a handful of apps as portals to pretty much everything. They aren't going back to RSS readers or "surf" a thousand individual websites.