Bring back interactions with real people
The network is built around the concept of limited visibility. Your posts can be seen either by your direct contact or by their direct contacts as well if you allow it
There is no way to send a connect request to a random person. You either allow that proactively or your direct peers mediate the connection request
Pcom is open-source, there is no company backing it. You can host your instance if you like. Pcom supports markdown, allows easy export/import and has a public api, which you can use to build a client if you want to.