Had the same kind of page at his age. AngelFire and Geocities. Was also scripting my own "eZine" in ASP for a music news page that summarized articles around the web, linked to them and allowed reader comments. This was a pretty new concept at the time (in the "mainstream"... Slashdot started it in 97) the term blog didn't really exist yet. However, I'm not sure I saw the web as "small," it just was what it was. He had good sensibilities to recognize its potential at that age and time.
He did what everybody did at that age and time, a html full of java applets.
The article is very poetic.
"Fourteen years later, he’s still the the most visible face of the world’s largest social network." meh
