I think Luke's questions resonate, and that might be the other side of this. Steemit, vs the STEEM currency, and inbetween, or facilitating both; the steem blockchain.

Each is almost it's own product, and in reflection; I can see that Steem will never be appreciated in it's current format as a POWERFUL and MODERN blockchain until it is primarily promoted as such. AS a product: Steem.

And so Steem gets lost in the shadow of a community getting it on at Steemit. Steemit overshadows the real power of Steem, and the current price of STEEM reflects that in ways, that must be very disappointing to many of us..

So what to do? ;-) SMTs

And SMTs certainly do evolve the Steem blockchain in several ways.
But the real model I see as the "New Model for the Internet" (Web3) is really Steemit in so many ways.

Steemit:
Built from the ground up to be an Ad-free uncensorable free speech platform, powered by it's own economy, creating value based on the community's attention and contributions, motivating people in a very obvious way, to participate. An idea that should be VIRAL if properly executed.

SMTs: I don't see any such thing there. An advertising network built on top of STEEM (tm) to power user contributed content (not necessarily on a block-chain, not necessarily decentralized, certainly not ad-free)?

It just seems like there are so many details left out here @ned...

it does seem your passion has moved on, to creating an entirely different product altogether; and then using Steemit as an example of how others can do the same thing (only better?), and they can take on FB, YT and the rest.