Quite right mate. I've made a couple of, what I call friends but they might not view it quite the same way just yet, who have helped me out with their sheer voting power or their social influence. I'm actually struggling to create much of a following because despite putting out, what I view as, good posts I don't have the time to interact as much as I would like.

I'm making a conscious effort today to get out there and comment on a whole load of posts :) Starting on my feed and then looking for tags to follow.

Following tags seems a better idea to me than looking at "new" or "trending" as a large chunk of it won't hold my interest or introduce me to like minded people. With a common tag at least we already... have something in common (sorry about that sentance, I just woke up!)