“A beautiful size.” I like that. It describes the phenomenon exactly.

Like, Gemini (the protocol) is too small. It’s below the threshold is usefulness. I still cross publish (serve) my content in Gemini format, but I never actually browse it anymore.

(Tiny rant) That said, I think Gemini went too far; gmi is smaller than it needs to be, and it was locked down and made immutable prematurely. Client/server interactions need to be a little more complex; I think the extreme simplicity has contributed to its lack of adoption: it’s almost impossible to serve a functional and user-friendly search engine with, leading to what’s largely a dark network - not intentional dark, but filled with isolated, unreachable nodes and practically no discovery. And with its failure, it shut the door on that solution space. It was popular enough that early adapters who tried it are going to shy away from something Gemini-like, but a little more full-featured. I’m bitter about Gemini; if only Solderpunk had had a little more vision.