That ETH or BitShares aim to be a financial platform. Crowdfunding and maintaining the records for other Assets, Currencies and Smart Contracts are the reason those platforms exist in the first place.
Steemit should focus on social media instead of the creation of currencies.
This is a whole different market.
Focusing on social media for Steem would mean to include native IPFS for data, website integration like Wordpress, Drupal or the likes. Helper to include Steem functionality in your website, project or workspace. Make steemit.com great for the user without all the bugs. Working closely together with all the 3rd parties being built on steem.
With the focus on creating currencies it takes away all those ressources for more than 3 years and steem can be lucky to have a community that creates a lot of these functions.