Happy Steemiversary - you made it through one year and that is more than many. And you raise some great points here, communities are a great way to engage and grow with people - and simple things like taking the time to comment on others post is also a great way to get your own blog seen.
I think your point about "Spread the Wealth" is absolutely spot on, while we do have some excellent curation projects like @curie rewarding exceptional content - it is in all our interests that the smaller and upcoming accounts that are still working hard and producing good content - get some sort of reward for their effort. It is easy for the tit for tat circle to develop, with stake holders with similar Steem Power upvoting each others content for equivalent rewards - but when you have under 100 sp you effectively are giving each other a token gesture with no worth. For a long time now I have been supporting a wide range of our smallest accounts even though doing so makes no financial sense - curation rewards are tiny and return votes which are very much appreciated can not be equivalent. But it's the bigger picture, helping, growing and retaining accounts makes for a busy lively Blockchain - however important investors are it's still the people using it that bring the biggest attraction.
You have also suggested some great ideas for promoting quality content, I'm not sure how workable those suggestions are but it's always a benefit to see new ideas on how to progress. The Steem Blockchain presents endless possibilities, steemit.com is just one example of those and we have other blogging front ends to choose from along with a constantly growing range of DAPPS.
We have a lot to look forward too, hopefully more people choose to stick around like you have. And a big thanks to @poeticsnake for highlighting this post.
Thanks for your detailed response.
The good thing is that you’re not alone. I’ve seen other large Steeminans out there who see the big picture and use their voting power on smaller accounts rather than going after curation rewards. The most obvious example is @hr1 who gives out lots of decent sized upvotes to smaller users with decent original posts. I got a curie upvote once but with curie you have to be really into writing to get curie upvotes consistently. I've looked into writing for other curation projects.
Steemmonsters is the only Steem DAPP I’ve heard of. I will have to look into learning about more Steem applications.