I find Facebook and Steemit to be very different beasts. Facebook is much more network orientated while Steemit is much more content orientated. It's why I have my family, my friends, the people I collaborate with at Inverted Audio, all over at the blue F. Here, I have my musings, content and contributions. They can exist side by side.
If anything, I find Steemit more of a Tumblr alternative. I spent a good while finding a platform where I could just write my own material and this place has been a good fit. Certainly more emotional investment beyond the false starts I had on Tumblr.
But yeah, it does sound a little bit more like PR from Facebook, just letting people know that they're paying attention to this sort of thing. "Hey! We're still here!"