I used to be involved in Steemit with some success, mostly by writing articles about the Steem blockchain itself and how to interact with it.
The appeal for me as a developer is that you're working with an unrestricted firehose API. If you want to build something you don't need to worry about limitations or breaking some terms. You can build your own Steemit front-end if you want since the back-end is just another node on the chain.
The community is really nice and I made many good friends. Regardless of the future of Steem I consider it a success and a tell-tale of real life applications for blockchains.