Right now the Steem blockchain has one publicly available app - Steemit. Soon we will have two more in the form of Busy and SteemConnect.

well, there is #eSteem application as well.
I like streemer more...
I would be interested creating such app, but as you said funding project needs proper ways and it is quite big and long term project, which I am sure would benefit platform a lot...Hope to see some initiative from developers. I have a lot of ideas about applications on top of Steem, if only I could get more time.... :D