This AIN'T Twitter!
I don't want to follow people! I don't. I don't give a shit about what the same person has to say. I care about topics from a variety people, those I know and follow and those I don't.
It's a lot of work to find and follow people - not interested.
Now, when I come to steemit to give it a view, all I see are the same ole articles, months old, boring shit. I have to click through all the headers in order to arrive at something mildly interesting.
I've said this so many times before, but everyone here is so involved in Steemit daily that they have no clue how to capture the general audience - none, zero, clueless!
As I mentioned in my article about the Circlejerk and the article I wrote about following tags, things need to change.
People care about topics of interest mostly, not about certain people. That is, unless Steemit sees itself as some kind of Twitter-esque platform, another me-too social media site.
Wake up - quit living so deep in the product and learn how to capture the 99% of people that will consume the media. Otherwise, the platform is going to be a royal flop, if it's not already. Yes, there are issues with the economics, and more. But much of this goes away when you fix the biggest issue there is, general appeal.
I'll have you covered soon, follow @charlieshrem (yeah, i'm aware how ironic the recommendation to follow someone is) and he'll be announcing it when i'm done developing it.
I shall be vague on the topic of what "it" is, but "it" will give you just what you want and more.
Following. Is it done already? I agree with @jacobt, following in the beginning is manageable but soon becomes unwieldy. A blend of both would be nice. A self curated streem (see what I did there?) which filters the chaff from the wheat, top level comments and contributions within a topic of interest of people you follow and then complemented with the general population would be a nice to have.
I save my favourite topics as shortcuts in my browser. I follow users for the quality of their content and find they tend to resteem a variety of other users' content at the same level of quality. They're my gatekeepers.
https://steemit.com/steemit/@mattclarke/to-the-169-authors-i-follow
I agree that following tags is a great idea. I've suggested it as well.