The triumph of the little guy?

It is now possible to provide an online experience, for example when selling books, that rivals that of Amazon.com. There are an estimated 4 million independent online retailers, and there has to be a good chance that their sites are some of the best on the web. Even if you just do the maths, the number of people coming up with different ways of solving the problem must be in favour of the little guy. And yet, the number of small independent retailers being held up in the public eye as a great example of how to sell online can be counted on the fingers of one.. um.. nose.

So what's happening? Do you need a marketing budget and a PR consultancy in order to "get noticed"? Surely that's against the spirit of the so-called web 2.0 revolution? Word of mouth is supposed to be the biggest thing these days isn't it?

OK, so what about other factors. Maybe the little guys simply aren't producing the goods. Well, just from my own line of work I'd say that this is probably true of 99.9% of online ventures, but then again there are lots of small businesses that are actually getting good help and advice from little web agencies (and sundry other experts) across the land. I know we ourselves have built some pretty cool things for little businesses, that have helped them compete with the best of the web.

All of this leaves me a little perplexed. If it isn't the lack of cracking small business web sites, some other dynamic in the equation must be failing. I suspect it is.. and I may not be popular (or even correct) for saying this, but I think it's the audience.. The problem with web 2.0 and its democratic distribution model is that it requires the consumer to be sophisticated enough to be able to tell a good one from a bad one. When the differences aren't that great, then maybe its easy to forgive people that lack of distinction and just go with "the brand they know".

It does make me wonder just how effective all this hype will ultimately turn out to be, and whether there is anything other than hope and ambition left to comfort the tiny startup looking to dominate against the big guys. Come on someone, tell me about cases that I've forgotten about where the little guy has triumphed.