[burntsushi]

I'm not sure that it really applies to me (since I'm not following anyone), but I could imagine it being useful if you only follow people you respect. If someone you respect is using a library, isn't that a strong endorsement or a vote of confidence?

Of course, starring a repository doesn't mean you're using it...

And you said you see this anyway in your feed...

But maybe it'd still be useful as a thread to pull on or if you missed that event in your feed.

If anything, it does seem to increase the "networkyness" of GitHub. I think I kind of like that.