I think a simple social network like SteemIt is a very adoptable idea. Perhaps minimalist with elements of something like LinkedIn meets Minds. It would probably be a nice merger between Busy.Org and SteemIt. The identity side of it must be absolutely BETTER than what Steem does right now. Possibly by connecting account creation through a series of invite and confirmation; this way lost account recovery falls to the people in the network who invited the new account creation. By looping Account creation into the economy and having recovery based on networked accounts, this would minimize lost accounts and reduce the spasm of fanatical spam account creation during growth cycles.
There should absolutely be NO PRE-MINE in the economy and the rate of token growth should be based on the content activity and content growth. This way, reputable and quality content developers will organically grow to the status of Whale rather than introducing Whales unnaturally into the ecosystem.
In short, if you clone this pathetic Social Network, SteemIt, in order to build a better version, I'll be an early adopter for sure.