I care about reputation on Steemit a great deal. However, I've already achieved my main goal of 70 reputation so it's left a lot of space to ponder what its value is, truly. This is due to the fact that it's somewhat "pay-to-win:" it measures the votes you get, and huge ones make a big shift, so you can just buy them from bid bots or smartmarket.
The Steem User Authority project (@steem-ua) was just created to try and create a better, less exploitable reputation algorithm. It's really exciting for those like me who want to improve my interaction with the community and need a more intricate incentive. However, since it's best to keep setting higher goals to motivate oneself: I'd like to hit 75 reputation as my next target! (that will probably take more than 6 months to achieve.)