Today is my first day on PALnet, at least offiically. Of course, since it's built on Steem there's a lot of overlap, but it's still a new experience (and a return to the old-school Steemit UI, though it's a little more bearable because PALnet is powered by a token, so things like the Trending and Hot tag are sorted by PAL tokens rather than Steem votes.
I'm not sure how effective this will be in the long run, and there's the usual predominance of PAL-related posts just as Steemit has a lot of Steem related posts, but I do have to say that the trending and promoted sections certainly are less obnoxious in terms of their content.
I'm looking forward to this as an addition to Steem and a way to get involved in larger network more organically, and we'll see how it goes.