Bubbles.town
Hacker ApprovedRanked 5 of 11 blog directories by recommenders
A Hacker News-style front page for personal blogs, ranked by votes from real people, with RSS support that people find calmer than social feeds. Critics say it still surfaces many rants and some low-quality posts.
A Hacker News-style front page for personal blogs, ranked by votes from real people, with RSS support that people find calmer than social feeds. Critics say it still surfaces many rants and some low-quality posts.
20 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 16
- criticize it
- 4
- approval share
- 80%
Recommended in 4 of 13 months
- November 2025: not recommended
- December 2025: not recommended
- January 2026: not recommended
- February 2026: not recommended
- March 2026: not recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: not recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: not recommended
- October 2026: not recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it carries the badge
- 16 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 4 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 4 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Quiet, personal sites instead of SEO
“The feed is refreshingly quiet and actually feels like browsing personal sites instead of corporate SEO bait.”
Comment from 3 Apr 2026 in “Bubbles – HN-like frontpage for personal indie blogs” “a post by a curated human is much more likely to be interesting than the majority slop of /new”
Comment from 17 Jun 2026 in “Hacker News but for Independent Blogs” “It feels really refreshing compared to doomscrolling of social media”
Comment from 17 Jun 2026 in “Hacker News but for Independent Blogs” - Comment from 17 Jun 2026 in “Hacker News but for Independent Blogs”
Human-curated, voted front page
“a post by a curated human is much more likely to be interesting than the majority slop of /new”
Comment from 17 Jun 2026 in “Hacker News but for Independent Blogs” “the front page is created by real people voting”
Comment from 3 Apr 2026 in “Show HN: I built a frontpage for personal blogs” “Federated voting and comments on top of RSS has an indie-web elegance to it”
Comment from 17 Jun 2026 in “Hacker News but for Independent Blogs” Excerpts and RSS support
“showing the excerpts from the post text is vastly superior to just showing the post titles”
Comment from 17 Jun 2026 in “Hacker News but for Independent Blogs” “Thanks for adding RSS! Bringing Bubbles (and HN) into NetNewsWire is a game-changer”
Comment from 17 Jun 2026 in “Hacker News but for Independent Blogs”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Feels like doomscrolling
“it feels just like a worse doomscroll than social media”
Comment from 6 Jul 2026 in “The Great Blogging Collapse: What Happened to 100 Successful Blogs?” “It feels really refreshing compared to doomscrolling of social media”
Comment from 17 Jun 2026 in “Hacker News but for Independent Blogs”
Other blog directories people recommend
The four most recommended other blog directories, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Kagi Small Web | 46 | 30 | 61% | 9 | — | — |
| Wander small web explorer | 31 | 3 | 91% | 7 | 1 mo3 owners | Approved |
| Ooh.directory | 26 | 5 | 84% | 7 | — | Approved |
| Personal blog frontpage | 21 | 1 | 95% | 2 | — | — |
| Bubbles.townThis page | 16 | 4 | 80% | 4 | — | Approved |
What people said
17 of the 21 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“but there’s a lot of fluff”
“it seems to surface a lot of negative posts that are mainly just rants”
“it feels just like a worse doomscroll than social media”
“This bubbles.town submission's title could be light evidence of negative parallelism's utility.”
“Opened the page, first entry: „white supremacist dogwhistle“”
“Looks like a pretty good aggregation.”
“Federated voting and comments on top of RSS has an indie-web elegance to it”
“Thanks for adding RSS! Bringing Bubbles (and HN) into NetNewsWire is a game-changer”
“a post by a curated human is much more likely to be interesting than the majority slop of /new”
“showing the excerpts from the post text is vastly superior to just showing the post titles”
“Would love a version of this on HN.”
“It feels more curated and less firehose-y.”
“It feels really refreshing compared to doomscrolling of social media”
“The feed is refreshingly quiet and actually feels like browsing personal sites instead of corporate SEO bait.”
“the front page is created by real people voting”
“I can't keep any of the naming straight”
“it’s genAI and the author uses twitter”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.