Steemit does have a different setup compared to the other social media sites, especially right now. It's primarily been a blogging platform vs the normal social media setup so far. Unfortunately the feed system does only allow to follow authors and not topics, but there are some tools that can provide that such as steemshovel.com (to search on multiple topics/tags) and steemwatch.com (which I'd not played with myself, but believe it will notify on new posts on certain topics.) Personally I'm excited to see where the busy.org project will go to make things have more of the standard social media look and feel. But I'll agree, searchability is one of the things Steemit is needing development in.

There's nothing wrong if it doesn't fit what you're looking for right now. Steemit is still in Beta and getting new features and UI elements worked on constantly. FB and Myspace didn't start off in their current forms either.