portals vs algorithms

i find it odd how portals didnt stay the norm for sites on the internet. to me they seem like a logical starting point, but the first places people go to now would be the social networks or a search engine, (at least the search engine makes sense to me) i like the idea of sifting through indexes to find new sites, as opposed to being fed the content. to me its like that sensation of discovery. more exiting than the algorithm doing "the heavy lifting" instead. it isnt really heavy lifting though. like i said, its fascinating. does anyone else see it this way? are there any portals today? (aside from newgrounds portal which only leads to its own content)