I am an Ethereum perma-bull. For a generalized smart contract platform I don't think there's anything better. It's easy to let yourself get turned off of Ethereum due to all the negative news surrounding the DAO, but remember that was one single dapp (decentralized application) written by Slock.it, a for-profit company completely separate from the Ethereum Foundation (the entity responsible for development & advancement of the Ethereum blockchain itself). So you can't just say Ethereum itself is too risky or error prone because of the DAO debacle. That would be like blaming Microsoft because someone wrote a bad Windows app that messed up your computer.
Ethereum's promise is that it doesn't limit itself to one particular area of focus, rather it allows developers to create whatever their imaginations can dream up. All it will take for the technology to go mainstream is one killer dapp. One such upcoming dapp which looks very promising is Augur, a decentralized prediction market set to launch later this year.
Steem, on the other hand, is a blockchain focused on one specific goal: to build a decentralized social media platform. It has enjoyed early success because the cryptocurrency technology behind it is invisible to the masses. Sure, you have to learn about Steem power, Steem dollars, etc, but accessing and using Steemit is just like using a regular web site. Someone who knows how to use Reddit can pick up Steemit very quickly. The problem with Ethereum right now is it has a much higher barrier to entry than Steemit. You need much more specialized knowledge to make effective use of it, or even to figure out how to run a dapp. Once the next generation of dapps like Augur come along, I think the underlying Ethereum technology will become hidden from ordinary users in much the same way that the Steem blockchain is hidden, and that will lead to greater rates of adoption by the masses.
COnvince me. TBH every time i hear about ethereum, none of the smart contract capabilities ever impresses me that much.. like its not something i could ever see real people actually using or depending on.
Like if we're not talking about a developer just a business person -- someone thats moving money what is there that do with ethereum that i can't do with bitcoin.
like not theoretically one day someone will develop a smart contract that cleans your asshole for you, right now.
Right now it's hard to imagine all the use cases for smart contracts because the technology is so new and developers are still exploring what can be done with them. It's a little like when the Internet started out, people weren't sure what it was good for and couldn't imagine all the amazing stuff that would come later like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc.
Ethereum's smart contracts are essentially bits of computer code that execute on the blockchain. They are implemented in a programming language called Solidity, which is Turing complete. By Turing complete, I mean that Solidity is a full featured language which can implement any computer program that your imagination can dream up (although whether that program would be efficient and practical to run on a blockchain is another matter altogether).
And that's the advantage Ethereum has over Bitcoin. It can do everything Bitcoin can as far as being a store of value is concerned, but it also has a programming language built into it. Imagine Bitcoin as a simple calculator, then Ethereum is Excel with macros support.
Some example uses of smart contracts include: automated escrow for asset exchanges, locking up money to be released at some specific date in the future (like a trust fund), proof of ownership of physical assets (Digix gold), decentralized exchanges (Etherex), decentralized prediction markets (Augur), gambling apps (Rouleth), and many more that have yet to be dreamed up. Right now the first generation of dapps are kind of hard to use and require technical knowledge of Ethereum, but in the future they will be as simple to use as going to a web site and ordinary people will have no idea that Ethereum is the underlying technology used to implement them, just as when you go to Facebook you don't need to care about the technical details of whatever database system is being used under the covers.