March 16, 2026
Vibes vs Algorithms
Kevin Boone: The "small web" is bigger than you might think
Small Web, Big Feelings: vibes, Google drama, and 9,000 active blogs
TLDR: A developer tallied Kagi’s “small web” and found roughly 9,000 regularly updated, ad‑free personal sites—way more than many expected. Commenters are split between “it’s a mindset” optimism, “you can’t resurrect the ’90s” cynicism, and anger at Google burying blogs, plus a fight over excluding slow-but-great blogs.
Kevin Boone crunched some feel‑good numbers: Kagi’s community‑curated “small web” list ballooned from about 6,000 to 32,000 entries, and after filtering for working feeds and at least monthly updates, there are still around 9,000 active indie sites. He also nods to the ultra‑minimal Gemini scene (about 6,000 “capsules,” many quiet), where feed aggregators let you browse fresh posts like a tiny, cozy timeline.
Cue the comments section meltdown. One camp cheers that the small web isn’t a size; it’s a mindset—publish for joy, not clicks. Another camp snaps back that the whole revival is “nostalgia cosplay,” arguing the ’90s magic came from explosive growth that can’t be recreated. The crowd then turns its pitchforks to Big Tech, claiming personal blogs are “buried by Google” and boosting indie tools like marginalia‑search.com to actually find humans again. A power‑user even dropped a one‑liner command to pull random blogs from indieblog.page—like RSS roulette for hipsters.
The spiciest fight? Kagi’s bias toward frequently updated sites. Fans of “slow web” fume that rare, once‑a‑year posts are the real bangers. Jokes flew about “album drop blogs” and “grandma’s site > SEO farm.” Verdict: the small web is bigger than expected—and the real battle is vibes vs. algorithms
Key Points
- •Gemini has roughly 6,000 known capsules, though many appear inactive, and forums show about a hundred active users.
- •Site updates in both the web and Gemini are commonly published via ATOM or RSS feeds in XML.
- •Feed aggregators can list updates from many Gemini capsules on a single page due to the ecosystem’s small size.
- •Kagi’s Small Web list grew from about 6,000 sites last year to approximately 32,000 entries.
- •After filtering invalid or untimestamped feeds and low-activity sites, about 9,000 small web sites update at least monthly.