Hacker News Reader

I believe you may to want to state the subject matter that you would like to get your friends engaged with. If it's stuff like SEO, social media, CPC and business, then try inbound.org. Other then that a sub-reddit around specific content may be your only shot. There are sub-reddits for just about everything. Once you create an account and choose your sub-reddits, that is all you see.

Metafilter + Ask Metafilter.

Seconding this.

http://www.metafilter.com/

http://ask.metafilter.com/

With some reservation... fearful of it becoming "overrun".

Isn't reddit basically what you're thinking about?

Reddit is MUCH too geeky for my non-techie friends. Also it doesnt look civilized like HN. It looks like one big confusing mess of untrustworthy chaos. And it doesnt look intelligent. My friends are not interested in cat photos and celebrity gossip.

Unsubscribe from the default subreddits and you'll find more intelligent discourse.

Focus on sub-reddits.

You should check out TL: http://thelist.io

Same format, only less tech-focused.

Ask HN: HN for non-techies?