Well, it seems there are two of us on the Internet. I do almost everything except browsing the web straight from the terminal.

> people knew about it from sheer novelty

This is a really good point. The essence of the question probably boils down to how many people like us there are out there, who want an alternative badly enough to work on it (and in it) while it's small and sparse. The only real feature I can think of that might seriously set it apart from today's net for everyone else is privacy protection, which could be built in from the ground up.