Steemit is a money based site, it is advertised as a way to make money and people come to steemit trying to make money, which can be a good and bad thing. When we look at other social media sites they all started by offering a service, Facebook was created so people attending top universities could find people from other universities to communicate with. Youtube was created as a platform to share videos with the world.
All these large social media sites and apps started with the idea of people being able to communicate and benefit from communication, whereas steemit was created to make people money through communication.
Being so money central is a good way to bring people to the site as many people now use social media to make money however it isn't the primary focus of other sites. With steemit people come to make money and they post hoping to make money and currently we are seeing the backlash of that once again.
People join steemit to make money and if they don't make money they move on, as the currency steem isn't pinned to any price it can move around in value large amounts in little time. When the price of steem goes up steemit is a busy place that seems vibrant and full of relatively happy people, however as soon as the price begins to drop people get disgruntled and lose interest in the site.
This means that we see a cycle of steemit being popular when steem is up and being unpopular when steem is down. As steem is down at the moment people have started posting less and usually less people sign up when the price is down. This also means the community can change rapidly from a place with tons of posting and generally happy people to people slowly pushing out content and being a bit disgruntled.
I think that in the long run this could cause huge issues because the people that do stay all the way through the many ups and downs will undoubtedly become a stronger unit and throughout the ups and downs this core group will decide what they like and don't like. Creating a steemit circle jerk and no one likes an internet circle jerk. It could also mean we see a few people each cycle when steem is up take advantage of buying bots and similar exploits to make some quick money and then cash out helping to keep the cycle going.
All of this could stop steemit from ever growing to being one of the big social media sites and the championing aspect of making money could also be what holds steemit back from reaching the status of other sites. I also don't really know how this could be fixed because the site is all about money and transparency with the amount people make. Like with many other issues on steemit it looks like it will be down to the users of the site to do their best to help fix the issue and if the community focused a little less on the money aspect it could help a lot. Rather than getting frustrated and disgruntled when the price of steem is down people need to push through and keep posting and not worry to much about the price being down and help to bring it back up.