Totally agree that steem has big potential.
However I'd love to see more high quality content on steem. As of now it's hard to compare steem and, say, medium. I just tried to search "blockchain" using steemit search... I don't think I have any other choice but go to medium, search there and see nicely-looking list of good articles.
Another bothering thing is people doing whatever have to be done just to get upvotes and resteems. Of course there is a way to play the system by posting something, asking other to promote it and promoting their posts in return. Or I don't know what people do but I see quite a lot of posts that has little value to me (some contest or someone saying that steemit is cool) that nevertheless earn $200+.
In fact is seems that currently there is a little incentive for someone to write a good articles. Ones that require research and take at least few hours or days to write. Why bother? Post a photo to contest and earn twice that money!
And, frankly, I don't know how you guys are not embarrassed with these "resteem!", "upvote!" or "N followers!!!" images. I don't know, in my opinion it's so cheap and flashy... It's like a car sticker - you probably won't put it on a Ferrari.
But steam is at early stages. So I hope it'll overcome these obstacles - the ideas implemented here are great.
You're right. The search engine on Steem also needs a lot help due to its inaccuracy; I'd suggest using https://asksteem.com instead of it.
I think the reason lots of people ask for "follow for follows" or spam "upvote me" on users' posts is because they see the potential of Steem through posts with hundreds of dollars of rewards on the trending page, but don't know how to get there.
So they put out a post, and see it earn less than a few cents of rewards, and get quickly disappointed. I've even seen a few people at this stage stop posting on Steemit, discouraged by low rewards.
Some of those who stay realize that they need widespread support from other users in order to gain real rewards, and start posting in the way you described, for better or for worse.
In the end, it's those who stay invested in the platform, those who constantly write high-quality content, and those who interact well with other users who win the most. This is why I think Steemit's old slogan was so great— "Come for the rewards, Stay for the Community."