@tracemayer, what is missing in Steem at there moment is a sophisticated curation system. Right now it is too much of a blunt instrument, but has the potential to be something very powerful. Unfortunately, potential is not a foregone conclusion. So people liked you, people with influencer in the community and long standing reputation, need to promote high quality proposals for improving the platform.
One way to improve the curation system is to have a more sophisticated tag system based upon the LinkedIn skill tags model. Anyone should be able to add a tag to a post and others should vote on them. Rewards can be given for adding semantic tags and for upvoting those of others, the same as posting, except weighted less.
Here is a post to explain more clearly: https://steemit.com/steemit/@manipulable/proposal-make-tags-useful-in-steemit-or-copy-linkedin
I believe with the above tag solution that steemit can seriously complete with Reddit.
And here is a post that has curated some of the best Steemit improvement proposals: https://steemit.com/steem-ideas/@beanz/give-steem-ideas-your-love
The best thing you can do for the community is putting your weight behind solid, practical, high quality Steemit Improvement Proposals that make it easy to find high quality semantically relevant posts so that niche subjects can thrive.
RE: What is the Steem Network? Trace Mayer dips in his toes with Chris Coney