Hello Ethan.
Even though I am very new here, I would say that I don't think steemit and its creators care about competing with FB as they are completely different as concepts and business models.
FB is free but receives a lot of money from the paid ads thousands of people are using, not to mention the collection of data from its users and selling them to companies.
On the other hand you have steemit which is free too but instead it pays the content writers the way it does. And the most important is that the model of steemit does not support trash content, with that meaning the quality will be different and better.
What I think will happened is that many people - like myself - who don't like FB even though we use it, will be attracted from steemit's concept and spend more time here rather there.
And I have the feeling that those coming to steemit will be the mature, serious and deep thinking individuals that don't see themselves fitting into FB anymore.