They seem to be going through their own Digg v4 moment here, completely disregarding users because they think they're big enough to survive without them.
www.snapzu.com - Excellent content and friendly community. Has a unique XP/Leveling system and ability to post content into multiple subs.
www.empeopled.com - Gives you more influence based on the amount of up-votes you've received. Use influence to steer future of the site.
www.theneeds.com - Good content but a lot of it looks automated, possibly using bots. No discussion so you lose a lot of that community feel.
www.hubski.com - Classic alternative, been kicking it around for 4-5 years, but still little activity. Community is small but nice.
www.spreadit.it - A dark themed reddit alternative that is similar to reddit and easy to use. Content and community is lacking however.
Note: I didn't mention the voat boat because I felt they have a little too much hate/racism on there.
Anyway, +1 for Snapzu.
That said, does Azure play nicely with IIS? I bet it's expensive but can you scale that way maybe?
Snapzu gave me a db-error. Bad first impression...
spreadit address should be spreadit.io.
Hubski was the one I had the best impression of.