sweet sweet karma. the problem with reddit is that it's the new digg, and whatever... it's not the small cozy site it used to be in 2006. hubski to me is like the way the old reddit was.... small and cozy. Don't much care for the trivial technical differences, though i do like the trivial technical differences between hubski and reddit... tags are great here..... the idea of sub-reddits is a major fail.
I don't think subreddits were the mayor failure. In fact, I think small private subreddits are the only thing saving reddit from being 100% of full shit. This place doesn't have actual downvotes as far as I know, and I think downvotes are the biggest issue on reddit too. Also, sorry for necroposting a 42 day old thread.
Hubski is far more provider-based and far less content-based and I endorse that. I do think tags/subreddits/whatever are useful to discover and enjoy content that isn't provided within your usual haunts, but I think the best solution there is going to be different for everyone. I think a real issue is that Reddit didn't start out being inclusive to everyone but as soon as f7u12 cartoons hit, the universality of its architecture began to be exploited by everyone. And since you can't disinterest the f7u12 crowd from occasional forays into /r/askscience, the universality dragged everything down.