I actually have the opposite interpretation of what is needed to foster true community on Steemit. To me it is not about promoting community developing elsewhere but facilitating it more easily happening here. Not everyone can invest the time you’re investing in finding people to upvote. Even with all the Discord channels, curation trails, etc. there is no easy way to foster true community on here.
Contrast that with (IMHO) weak plays like Minds that lacks even a real blockchain token yet and is dominated by political quackery (also IMHO, of course) yet is pulling people from Steemit continually. I think the fact that it already has a Groups feature is a huge part of that. (Also that it works on mobile and gives everyone the same voting power.)
I’m probably going to continue focusing most of my social media time on Steemit simply because I have managed to build a feed of interesting writers, but I have to tell you, it was way easier to start connecting with like-minded supporters on Minds simply because I could join groups according to my interests and automatically have attention from likely supporters just by posting to those groups.
This is the #1 thing that Steemit needs to bring the “social” into this social media platform. How is it that Steemit Inc. doesn’t get the importance of allowing people to follow there deepest nature, which isn’t actually greed, but a desire to collect in groups!
community functionality was meant to solve these issues but I head about it around february last year and we are still waiting so in the mean time, it is what it has become.
Yes, Steemit Inc. doesn’t think it is a priority. They are totally missing the “social” concept in social media. Astounding, yet reality.
Thy are coders and developers. This is social for them ;)