On Reddit, I always had fresh content, which I'm not really seeing here

Eh That comes with time, I'm sure there were people back during the Digg exodus that complained Reddit didn't have as much content. It's all user generated stuff, so more users, more content, best we can do is step up ourselves and get the content going.

I definitely feel the content drought, but switching my feed to All + Active, and just watching all of the random crap go by has been interesting.

Once the hobby communities start picking up speed again, I think it could be really good

I'm at the same place. Liking the platform, lamenting the current lack of content. When (if) it really gets rolling though, I can see this as a perfect replacement.

And while I was a bit leery of the distributed nature at first, I could see finding new niche instances being as fun as finding new subreddits.