Sort:  

What are the steps Steem needs to make to get there you think? I know communities are coming, that can only help, but are there other things I'm missing?

UX. A lot of the applications are similar to what Steem always was, what they need to do is find what people love and make the tokenization a native part of the experience, not a focus or an afterthought. This is a learning process though, and in time and as more developers get involved, innovation and wide use case will be added. If one doesn't like the experience of Steem, they are only here for the money - that'll never drive long-term adoption.

I see. Personally I'm waiting for communities before continuing on my own projects. That might be the same for many others. I think they'll enable a lot of possibilities of reaching people outside Steem and having them use it and not even being aware of it.