I think that one of the best aspects is that's it's open source, the fact that everybody can post and the market (the audience) decides is huge, because it bypasses the gate-keepers and that's no small thing.
Think about the success of Medium, only better because Steemit incentivises content creators !
What we can do to help Steem grow? Maybe spread the world and get influencers to talk about Steemit (I wonder what the Steemit team thinks about this) for example Gary Vaynerchuck and others always talks about Medium, maybe we should get some well known influencers with a big audience to talk about Steemit? Is it a good idea? I don't know guys, what do you think?