Steem (and all of its derivatives like steemit, busy.org, etc) will never be able to compete with popular social media apps unless a few items are handled and fixed. First, bandwidth issues for minnows and whales alike, almost everyone is feeling it with the Hive account@ned and Hive account@dan peacock battles that we are seeing. Secondly, the turnover rate for new users is so slow. Unless you know someone that can make you an account, it takes too long. Third major issue is the ambiguity between witnesses and users, most users have no idea what a witness is or their importance and that is a problem. The fourth big problem is steemit is ugly AF and the rate at which new features are added is way to slow, for instance its been how long and we still have no standardized method for finding out if we have been tagged by someone? I mean when we exclude going 3rd party. I can continue