A lack of growth year over year shows stagnation, so definitely not a success and in my eyes; A failed experiment, because the end result was not at all revolutionary and at this point will not be seen, at least for years to come if ever.
All Hive has proven is that you only need a small community to make the economics work for a consistent period of time.
By the way, I didn't say it was exactly the same when you get into the details. It's the basics that are close enough. It doesn't have to be that way though, because of the differences, like realtime voting. The problem is mostly with the average complacent human. If that can't be accounted for then there's going to be little difference. Stake weighted voting didn't counter this, it just made it worse.