Engagement is so key and you have a very good suggestion to improve it by building on the social capital, which I think is the strongest. The social capital is the key driver in change, either in preventing it or supporting it. And it speaks to our emotional and not rational side.

Since there is the strong focus on the social media aspect of Steem I have another perspective which is even find more appealing. Steemit is solving the Cryptocurrency Onboarding Problem and thus in my opinion the problem of the digital economy. Without much knowledge and effort a broad mass of users can suddenly and instantly participate in the digital economy. If I would look at it through the eyes of a Steve Jobs / Design Thinking / Usability then Steemit has a huge potential to offer a solution to the usability challenge of cryptocurrencies.

I am playing around with ideas how Steemit can be used in such a way that people apply it for their economic transactions. One example is to attract people to business, by using the Steemit platform. I see Steemit beyond a Reddit or social curation platform and would also like to use Steemit for example to attract people to physically come to places - an example could be tourism. People could write about a town/place or describe a hiking tour and reward people for showing up at certain places by giving them steem, by writing about it, etc... I am just at the beginning of exploring this angle and how this can be supported by the existing concept of steemit so that it is aligned with the framework of the founders and the users of this platform.