Certainly, Steem is a major competitor to Reddit.

Steem is very similar in terms of user experience. Both are oriented around commenting on posts. I expect the incentive layer on Steem could make the experience more engaging and habit forming. Reddit has an incredible community, via interest-specific subreddits. However, the platform has little innovation and does not particularly seem to care about improving the user experience. The curation and moderation models have broken down for many subreddits, especially related to cryptocurrency, where most of the front-page posts are from trolls, shills, or doofuses.

I'd say Steem has yet to develop strong communities. Perhaps the release of Smart Media Tokens will help community building as communities develop around tokens. However, I expect users and communities will emerge with time, at which point, Steem could become the new "front-page of the internet".

P.S. I think you mean Steem not Steemit (the former is the platform and network, the later is a single company / frontend).