@Dominic It's the same as reddit, but it's like each user had their own reddit: you own www.reddit-dominic.com, I own www.reddit-lenny.com, etc. And only the owner can post.

The advantage is that there's no global taxonomy that has to fit all. The taxonomy of channels is under total control of the owner, who shapes it in accordance to their interests, idiosyncrasies, etc. It's up to the follower to understand it, and to map (a subset of) it to their "followed" channels taxonomy (sort of like a bookmarks folder tree).

Hope that makes sense to you now... In any case I'll edit the post and add a sentence or two to make this point more clear. Or perhaps a drawing.