imagine a social media site without proper notifications. you have no way of knowing if someone replied to your message unless you go to the right tab in your profile and refresh the page. mentions are not supported only if you use mobile apps which are also not so great because they need time to get better. so we are without notifications.
now, Steem is a new technology (less than 2 years old) and there are other things to solve so notification are not very high on the TODO list. Gina gives the essence to this social media site, it brings you notifications on almost anything!
If you want to turn her into a news feed by following a bunch of people, yes you can do that but she can do way more! :)
it requires you to download an app called discord but it is actually a good thing because there are Steem communities on discord, you will see in many posts that they will share their invite link. each has it's own server where you can meet people and be known faster if you're new.