Well, yeah, it's nice to see Ned admit that the Steem devs missed the mark in a few ways last year, but I've still got some issues with this announcement.
First off, they claim all the new applications being built on the Steem blockhain as a success, but those are mostly community projects not built by devs on Steem's payroll, right?
Some of these items, like "free image hosting" just feel trivial. The rest of the internet solved the image hosting problem a long time ago, but here we are patting ourselves on the back.
The bit about how they have the budget for top talent but it's just sooooo hard to actually hire top talent is worth a giggle. Are you telling me that top talent can't roll out a Steem mobile app in a year? Or bring Steemit out of the dark ages?
Yes, I'm also excited for all the rocking new features, and I think it's great that they are attending to ensuring that new users can actually sign up. At the same time, I'd love it if Steemit wasn't a place that I have to be ashamed to bring my friends, if content discovery wasn't such a discouraging chore, and it didn't feel like cool but peripheral stuff like SMTs were taking precedence over making basic shit work right in the first place.
RE: @Ned Speaks: Update For 2018