For me (as a content provider), one of the weaknesses of Steemit is that my content effectively has "no value" beyond the first 24 hours. I know there are plans to change this to 7 days, but even so... this paradigm discourages the creation of "evergreen" content; information people will come here for two years from now, as a result of a Google search.
Does that matter? Well, it does, if we're interested in creating long term sustainability...
This is another important point. Unfortunately curation rewards incentivizes people to vote fast. If there was no curation rewards steem could have multiple periods where rewards are paid out, 7 days, 30 days, 6 months, 1 year, 2 year, 3 year, etc... A system like this could probably be made today but it would make no sense due to curation rewards.