Very interesting points. Kind of a tangent, I had kind of felt nostalgic about the days of the personal/hobby websites you appear to allude to that seemed so prolific before Facebook/etc, and wondered why things had changed so much.
It makes sense to me that now someone who used to be motivated to build a site about their life or a topic of interest now may often just sign up for a service like FB and occasionally do a post with an article, picture, etc about themselves/their interests. It seems to require much less effort for folks, which is perhaps why they do this. I lament the change somewhat and wonder what the future holds for this type of thing.
I agree, but this is not an inherent difference of the open web vs. a walled garden, only a difference of implementation of the software involved. Indeed, the developers of the Web and its browsers were aware of this problem, and they though that they had solved it, using something they called “Bookmarks”. Now, as implemented, bookmarks may not be easy enough, and there have been other ideas, like RSS feeds, which tried to improve upon the idea. Just don’t think that this difference is inherent and set in stone. New features could be developed.
It makes sense to me that now someone who used to be motivated to build a site about their life or a topic of interest now may often just sign up for a service like FB and occasionally do a post with an article, picture, etc about themselves/their interests. It seems to require much less effort for folks, which is perhaps why they do this. I lament the change somewhat and wonder what the future holds for this type of thing.