Interesting you say that RE finding people through comments - that has become one of my primary curation strategies (I am a top curator for @curie). Finding clusters of "good people" amidst the sea of spam and just plain old crap posting. As soon as I see an intelligent commenter I check out their blog and more importantly look at their feed - real people tend to follow real people who resteem good posts. But it takes a lot of work. I also use SQL query (and paid subscription to @arcange's SteemSQL database) to curate and keep up with favorite posters and that is very efficient, but costs me 10 SBD a month.
BTW if you haven't already, check out @thefreshfive . It is a dailycuration effort focused on the #introduceyourself tag, bringing you 5 recently introduced Steemians daily. I know the folks behind this effort and they are awesome, and I support it with upvotes for the daily posting and upvotes for the featured newcomers with my @r-bot curation account. It is an easy way to bring a steady stream of newcomers into your awareness without any effort :) LOL Much love - Carl