I read a lot of personal blogs. Bloggers tend to link to other blogs, so it's somewhat self sustaining. I've seen modern approaches to webrings and other reinventions of Web 1.0 sharing tricks, but none have really adhered to my habits.

All of that to say: I think it's more about habits (and breaking out of the search engine hole) than anything else. It's still very possible (and easy) to explore the World Wide Web; you just need to overcome the gravity of the big sites.