100% agree with many of the points you brought up here. Namely, the idea that we need key influencers to join Steem and ultimately create a user experience that not only competes with the traditional platforms, but even stretches beyond that experience with our “next-gen” features such as tokenization, rewards pools, blockchain data storage and more. A lot of people here tend to focus on the features, which is great... but the good content, conversations and influencers are just as important.
I think this will change as the community layers with SMTs more heavily take hold a the Steem-focused will remain at the core, but the layers will be consumer facing without a great deal of core visibility. This division of owned/operated/centralized communities means a much more tailored experience for contributors and consumers and hopefully that translates into user base expansion.