I recall the days when we wondered how far STEEM could keep falling...was it the bottom at 50, 30, 20 cents...nobody knew. Turns out the bottom when you're dealing with pennies is not too far away! Today I noticed STEEM trading up significantly.
Yes Bitcoin is going crazy (up over $14,000 at time of writing), but most other Crypto currencies are not following. STEEM is doing great. This also leads me to believe that the platform is maturing well and perhaps is simply starting to reflect true value in market cap.
In terms of platform to replace Reddit, it seems like there may be no need, as the top post on Reddit via the coinmarketcap.com Social plug-in actually points right back here to steemit.com:
https://steemit.com/utopian-io/@steevc/steem-needs-a-cute-casual-game-to-bring-in-non-bloggers posted by 
This actually brings a great question forward: What will be the steemit.com niche in the future? Clearly there is a sense of community here that does not exist on reddit or elsewhere...will this remain as the platform continues to grow? Hopefully! The possibilities to integrate with decentralized apps (Dapps) are very interesting, I have a feeling Facebook will try to do the same. The recent CryptoKitty craze shows the speed such a trend can grow in this day and age - and grow organically on a platform (Ethereum) that is not even ready to handle such traffic.
I am in full agreement with others on Steemit who want to see more social-focused Dapps in the steemit.com. Specifically would like to see little useful / interesting application can appeal to a wide (non-technical) audience. In the past I have heard of chess or other game community applications that would integrate with user IDs and perhaps even offer rewards to players based on fan voting.
As we continue the evolution, let's keep the community feeling on here going. I'm certain this will ensure a proper niche in contrast to Reddit for example (who seems very effective at mass categorization of ideas and discussion), and Facebook which is basically a closed parallel internet filtered and potentially manipulated by advertisers etc.
source: coinmarketcap.com
