RE: Open letter to Steem stakeholders: What adds value to Steem?
Steem is a currency. The question of the long term value of Steem will be determined outside of SteemIt.com. People will start seriously buying and using steem when it is used outside SteemIt to buy real world goods.
The actual value of SteemIt.com is driven by the reward formulas used by Steem. My post for today points out that SteemIt is driven by a seven day cycle. The activity I do today can get rewarded. The post I dropped 15 days ago cannot be rewarded.
15 days ago, I blasted out a post titled The Thermodynamics of Steem . This expressed my fear that SteemIt currently has too much of an internal focus. The reward structure focuses our attention on new posts by whales.
My conclusion so far is that the reward structure dictates that SteemIt should be seen as social media platform. Steem, of course, is a currency. The long term value of steem is for its use as a currency.
The system is not an ideal publishing platform.
I agree with everything you said except the last item:
Due to its decentralized nature for posting, and allowing its content database to be read and re-published by anyone... It is an ideal publishing platform "for sure".
The rest of your points are very valid though. :)