I personally would love to see steemit offer a better way to communicate between users with a more intuitive friends' list (EX: If your username is mentioned you'd be notified...I know minnowbooster does something like this.)
As far as the getting people on steemit....I just tell them bluntly that it isn't anything like Facebook and that they will need to create the friends through interaction. I think you're right in your thoughts about the user adapting to the platform. The platform has already become such a great place and I imagine it will only get better!
Couldn't agree with you more @jonnyrevolution. We are missing some pretty key pieces to make this platform more user friendly. Notifications is huge, bring able to private message is another one, and better search-ability. Well... let's be honest, we could probably both keep adding to the list!
I just make it clear to people that we are still in beta testing when they have questions about some of those common features being missing. Once you have been on here for a while, you get used to it and it doesn't seem as bad. haha