I think you hit the nail on the head when you talked about community and enjoyment rather than money. I’m on Facebook and Twitter as marketing tools for my work and I can’t stand them anymore. They do not encourage community or participation; they encourage clickbait, popularity contests and trolls. People are put off commenting and sharing, for fear of how it will make them look, or what someone might say, or just apathy. The way the system on here seems to be encouraging healthy interaction and participation is quite amazing. The fact it runs on good content is amazing. I hope it can maintain these good qualities as it grows.

I think curation is the key to hooking the masses. Most people consume rather than create content and are happy to share things they like or want to have associated with themselves. Being rewarded for sharing is something I could see appealing to people a great deal. More emphasis on this would be good – I had no idea about it until I started digging. Also – remembering the heyday of DevaintArt when it had a thriving community – rewarding people for commenting is another hook. There were no rewards for this on DevaintArt and yet it was the one thing that kept the community alive and people had accounts with no content but purely for commenting for no reward other than for its own sake. More highlighting of this too.

The other thing I would keep in mind is what stats are emphasised. Having large numbers friends or followers is seen as a sign of status (especially if you yourself follow few ;P) on FB and Twitter. What stats the emphasis is put on will affect the behaviour of users. Why not have number of times you’ve been upvoted or resteemed rather than followers/following? Those are the more important numbers here in practice, make them the popularity contest.

Other things would be: making it generally more easy/intuitive to use and having an inbuilt chat system. Honestly though, do you really want the masses? I don’t see a place for haters and trolls on here, or people that have problems using systems with any degree of complexity and community. For me, this place appears to select for people I’m more likely to want to actually engage with :)

As an aside, Steemit has fantastic potential for bringing patronage to creatives, and this is something we need more of. Part of my personal philosophy, very much inspired by Marsilio Ficino, is that we need a new Renaissance. For that money needs to flow to creatives who can enrich the world. I saw that beginning to happen before the financial crisis, with crowd funding. Now people are less willing to be generous because our economy got fucked to bail out bankers. Steemit appears to circumvent this... This could be a place to really make things happen. Again, do you really want the masses? ;)