It's still in beta, so.... your remarks will probably be adressed at some point. The goal is to make it into a 'sort of' facebook. And that means the chat-window option, PM's and a whole range of things. Making a group for people with the same interest or language for instance. I mean...there's just a hell of a lot to do, if they want to compete with the best.
So your points are valid, but hopefully already in the process of creation
There is the question of determining what links to show though. There are some 'easy' options, but pretty much any implementation is going to draw criticism from different groups about fairness. There is also the difficult task of determining relevancy and choosing posts the reader would want to see. Doing this feature 'right' is actually not so easy.
I do think it should be done though, and am in support of the idea. I know they are hard at work to improve Steemit and add new features, so I suspect it is only a matter of time.