I think it will be a long time before Steemit has mass social networking appeal - mainly due to the lack of mass appeal to cryptocurrencies in general. A lot of people don't understand Bitcoin, for example, and don't want to. So no matter how "social friendly" Steemit becomes, I don't think it will draw in much more people than it does now from Facebook, Twitter, etc..,
Adding a social energy layer to the algorithm makes sense, however. It would be great to see Project Curie grow as well, including category-specific support groups.
People like TDV may be disgusting to a lot of folks here now, but I'd hate to see Steemit become a place where the highest earners of "bonus money" are the sexiest girls showing the most skin Lol.
Imo, Steemit has been and is attracting the right type of people - we just need to attract more of them, and we need to reward high quality content authors and contributors more. Can't do much about increasing the value of Steem, I guess - or can we?