New Steem, Same as the Old Steem?

In short no. There are a lot of changes coming. But this isn't the first time there have been changes. Hardforks have been done before, 19 so far. Most of them had changes. Some big, some small. But in essence, each one has been a change, which means that once the HF hit, a "new Steem" emerged with the "old Steem" being in the past.

In the next few months, we expect, that there will be many changes. This is from the hardfork 21 with it's worker/developer proposal funding system, to the economic changes that shift the rewards more to curators. We've also recently seen what may be the last update to hardfork 20 with MIRA, which improved performance of the witness nodes.

Apart from hardforks of softforks to the code, there is a lot of activity by independent developers (not those who are paid by Steemit Inc) to get things done on the blockchain. The team at PAL with Steem Engine, SCOT, palnet and other sites where people can make their own communities has push a lot of new things to Steem. Kudos to them. And of course SPlitnerlands/Steem Monsters was done a while back by many of that same crew.

There is also 3speak which recently emerged as a high-reward platform for video content produces to enable them to speak freely without censorship, and ear nicely as well.

Before all this recent wave of new "new Steem", there was "new Steem" before. Utopian.io, fundition.io, d.tube, and many others have brought new things to Steem. There has long been a progression of "new Steem".

When new things comes out that weren't there before, there is of course something "new". New Steem is always happening when new things come into Steem. It's been happening for years. In this way, New Steem is just like before with Old Steem, as new things always come around and make what was before the Old Steem. It's just how it goes.

I guess the hype this time around is because there has been a lot coming out in a shorter period of time compared to the past. Then you have another hardfork with lots of changes coming soon, and that all gets bundled into a very large "new Steem" change.

Change isn't always good, but it's gonna happen. Enjoy the newest iteration of "new Steem". Let's hope it's all good (or mostly), with more "new Steem" to come in the future, as always ;) Peace.