I've been here near a month and a half now and I too find the interface slightly frustrating. Even with only 70 odd followed I still miss things I'd like to read, often until it's been up for 4-5 days. It doesn't help that the notifications seem broke at the moment, notifications come for feed updates but not for comments/replies. That being said I have no idea what the answers are, maybe more sensible sorting as you've suggested or perhaps an easier to access list of followers which shows how many posts they've posted since you last visited the list. Great post either way :)