There are two improvements we're working on right now:

• Better abstracts, as the current text shortening system leaves too much of the story unshown
• Reading blog comments through Planet, with blog systems that provide comment feeds

I feel the latter is quite important as the conversation sparked by a story is often where the beef is.

I'd also like to start adding new "news item karma" sources to Social News, as nowadays delicious and technorati are not the most relevant ones around.