I looked into Steem about a year ago and I didn't find a compelling reason to join or to use it, then. The steemit.com website, while active, provided no incentive or reason to become a part of the community. Any post or video I wanted to look at was freely available to anyone using a web browser. The only benefit to joining was to be able to upvote an article I found deserving of promotion. While this may be a laudable reason, it is hardly a good enough reason to go out and spend money (which I cannot spare), in a complicated and risky process of acquisition of the Steem currency.
The "use case" for Steem is as follows, as I understand it: To be able to promote the content you feel has value, and to reward the producers of that content. This goal, in abstract, seems both accomplishable and worthy. People do want new content that fits their interests, and they are willing to reward those that create this content. The problem lies in the implementation of the system that delivers this production/reward benefit.
The first part of this "problem" has to do with the design of the Steemit.com website itself. The simple list of articles, sorted by date, value, or trend, does nothing to help the end user to connect with the content that may be relevant to them. Searching for the content that's relevant to the user is a taxing and frustrating task. Unless the user is already invested in the idea of making Steem successful, the site has no useful benefits or mechanics that will encourage its adoption and attract new users. There is no benefit to be gained by using the site, as opposed to the myriad of other sites on which the producer is also publishing their content. It is in fact, acting as an additional barrier to be overcome by the user.
The second problem stems from the systems used to promote the adoption of the Steem currency on the Steemit.com website. This system is highly corruptible and open to abuses. Content producers may, indeed, be rewarded for producing quality original content. However, the gaming of the upvote system is rampant, and only serves as a means to steal value from those producers, in a misguided attempt at growing the community exponentially. As long as the quality content continues to be difficult to identify to those who would use the website, and "junk" posts can be used to extract value from the ecosystem, the value of the system is only likely to continue to decline.
I think that if Steem plans on being adopted by content producers as a tool for receiving rewards from the production of their content, it must find a way make the content available to the end-user in a relevant and timely way. Steem currency should be useful on more than just the Steemit.com website. It needs to be useful wherever the content is found on the web, to those who use the Steem currency, for the purpose of evaluating the content. I think this is a highly relevant point; the Steem currency needs to be relevant to the content that has no interest in adopting its use. It must be useful for those that are using the currency primarily, therein lies its basic value, and also rewarding to the creator of the content as a secondary value, a mutual benefit that can be extracted from the usage. Spending Steem currency on relevant and worthy content should create a value for me as a user, by way of "tuning" the content recommended to me in the future, assisting me to locate more relevant content that fits my individual tastes. The "reward" may, or may not be, claimed by the original creator of the content. "Upvoting" content that is new to the network, should create a "post" and an incentive reward based on the eventual usefulness of that content to others, in addition to refining the relevance of the information that is presented to me as a user of the system. If the creator of the content does not claim the incentive reward I (and hopefully others) have offered by the "upvotes", then the value of the crypto-currency will only increase, due to the additional relative scarcity of the currency.
As long as Steem is a poorly designed popularity contest, stuck on a backwater website that has no advantages to the end-user, it is doomed to be ignored and eventually, irrelevant. If Steem is to be relevant, it must be useful both for media consumers, as well as the producers.
Perhaps what I am describing here is something that cannot be incorporated into Steem, in which case I would say that it will be eventually replaced by what I describe here.
My .02