Meh...
Having few all round-general communities that are rewarding; and bunch of non-rewarding or low-rewarding(compared to these general communities) is basically the same thing as we had before the communities. :)
Majority of posts are being written in general topics, instead of narrowly specified topics... So, social aspect as well as engagement is still way off; when people start posting (or curating) in other communities that will be interesting effect.
So far we have founders and maybe a person or two writing in small communities; and everyone else writing in these 10.
Anyways, just my two cents. :)
That is why I have indicated the aspects of a social user and categorized them at the beginning of the post. So far people are guided primarily by monetary motivation. That is why the engagement is missing. Because they see reward by investing time & effort in posts more than in a comment, that is also the reason some of the curators have taken initiatives to make the engagement better. I hope, in time, it will get better as we become more and more mainstream.
More number of people in community also bring natural intersection and engagement better. But in a monetized community, its still a complex task as long as the reward is the primary motivation.