I think the main problem is that it's quite hard to browse the site, in relation to reddit, etc. There needs to be more automatic curation before the user sees posts. I have to go through pages and pages just to find something that piques my curiosity to click. That makes curation time consuming and less fun.
Yes that is definitely an issue.
I'm new, is it possible to follow tags in a useful way?
Not yet. There are some tools like Steemwatch that allow it but it is not part of the site yet.