All of your concerns would be good improvements and they have been bantered around on Steemit time and time again. I've been here almost one year and while I have seen some slight improvements, mostly in esthetics, I continue to see more negative things like more bad bots and vote buying (which destroys the very foundation of premise) and now dusting of account votes (where .01 and .02 votes are sucked up as dust by ???), becoming a lose-lose situation for minnows. You are right about first impressions... Steemit does not leave a good one and is why so many accounts remain inactive. Oh, have you been to SteemThat lately?
I have never used SteemThat. Looks nice :-) New eSteem Surfer has most things that I want. Probably will start to use it. Thanks :-)
SteemThat has a ways to go, working out some functionality issues, but I think Eric @Binkley is on the right track. Will check out eSteem Surfer... thanks! 👍