Communities are so important.
Communities around a particular area of interest like the very active Homesteading Community on steemit can be very important for improving user retention.
I have also been writing today about local geographical communities. In my past life I set up and ran one of the UK's first and largest online local community networks. It peaked at 300,000 users before Facebook arrived on the scene.
I believe building local communities on the steem blockchain with local people being rewarded to create local content could be a hundred times more powerful.