Everything still feels fairly new to me, but I feel it’s great for things you know you’re interested in. In terms of discovery though I feel there isn’t an integrated tool to encounter new stuff you’d like necessarily. I like music for instance, I went out of my way to find the music so like. Now finding a subgenre I could like but haven’t heard about yet would be more difficult, since there’s not an algorithm recommending it to me. I feel that’s all the more reason to spread the things we like through word of mouth. Organic growth is the heart of this type of medium after all.
Smaller communities do have it harder at first, there’s no guarantee your intended audience encounters the content you’re sharing after all. Although there could be a huge audience, but not a lot of posters. I’ve seen a mix of both of these cases so far. You can tell the interest is there since there’s may be a several dozen people subscribed to an instance no one has posted in ever or for months. Although I’m sure if activity happens again, people would be happy to engage with those interests.
Beans you say?