It needs to remove bots and bullshit posts. There are better chances to organically grow as a content creator on youtube and twitter or any other social media platform than on steemit. Steemit's value proposition is better money and fair payouts. Then comes the important factors stated by you - layout, featurs etc. Right now, as a content creator you cannot appear on trending page unless you are resteemed or upvoted by bots and curation is also not incentivized to promote new content creators.