Suggestions to improve Steem and Steemit, part 1

I have decided to write an ongoing series about how I think Steem and Steemit could be improved. My perspective is that of a recently started user and a small-time investor. I may be wrong or misinformed about some things and I would like to ask those who know better to correct any misunderstandings in the comments.

First of all, it seems to be difficult to obtain a new Steem account at this time and maybe has been for some time. I remember there being no difficulty at all in February when I signed up on Steemit. I think it was @samupaha who suggested that new users should be allowed to purchase a new account. I agree. It should be made as easy as possible to sign up using whatever method.

Secondly, while I've got the hang of how to use the Steemit GUI, I think it is still quite rudimentary and needs work. Compared to Facebook, Steemit is light years behind in functionality, design and ease of use. One thing that springs to mind is better content filtering. Perhaps some sort of machine learning based system to suggest content based on past reading habits, upvotes, downvotes and stated preferences. Finer granularity in content classification would be handy. Not all of it would have to be explicit and directly accessible to the user.

Thirdly, the use of advertising to increase the monetary value of the Steem. I have found advertisements on Facebook to be visible enough to be valuable to the advertiser but unobtrusive enough to not be a nuisance. Unless this is some sort of fundamental ideological choice I see no reason at all to not use this method to bring in massive revenue for all users.