Steemit’s biggest issue is that Steem Inc. isn’t interested in developing Steemit as a high quality platform. It’s both by design and by lack of interest (read: they are too vested to be the dominant long term player/interface of Steem).
Steemit is the initial centralized roll-out platform to bring eyeballs to the blockchain. Nothing more, nothing less.
Beyond that, one could even wonder whether Steem Inc. have what it takes to take the Steem ecosystem, with all its issues, to the next level.
So far we know that they don’t have what it takes to launch the long promised, and emphasized at SteemFest to be ready last year, communities. Same applies to the iOS app.
Somewhere, the issue is that there is a conflict between conflict of interest and desire to go full-out on Steemit. Given how vested Steem Inc. and top level employees are, that’s an entirely understandable ambiguity to struggle with.
I would be fine with Steemit continuing to suck, but all interfaces suck and all interfaces use the same trending, hot feeds that the blockchain provides via their API. You would imagine that one of these applications could fix the issue, but why bother when you have huge delegations to abuse at your disposal. The applications are cool, but the way they present information still is beyond primitive. Honestly, D-Tube is the only application I actually see accomplishing real development and even remotely addressing this issue.
The question is whether the third party developers with pick up the slack and whether they will be rewarded with cold hard Steem rather than a delegation. It's ridiculous that Steemit has millions of dollars of stake at their disposal and can not do anything but HODL it and hope the community saves them from their apathetic incompetence.
Agreed,
There is a steem blockchain with developers and there is a steemit the website with no developers.
How far is this from the truth? It would explain a lot of questions...