These are interesting changes and though I can see the knee-jerk reaction by some to be negative I think this is ultimately a good bundle of changes. It's going to force people to begin to forge an avatar of their own which cliques would form and bla bla blah... this is going to sound weird but basically I think steemit will eventually wind up functioning similar to Youtube in some ways with regard to building a following and producing quality, monitored content. Sounds like a stretch perhaps but wait and see it happen.