I'm not too scared on the short/mid-long-term. It's like Bitcoin: there is way better tech out there, but Bitcoin has the community and adoption.
There will be a lot of Steemit competitors, maybe even created by the possibility to have SMTs itself.
I do believe that Steemit as a whole should really be improved when you look a usability. Better ability to determine good quality authors and good quality content. A better balance between creation and consumption. A much better way to actually find the right content on the platform etc.
It is interesting that a lot of people create value adding services to be used with Steemit, but if we're honest, quite a few of those functionalities should be built in in the first place...
Anyway, still love the platform :-)
Yes, I completely agree that many functions are missing! This isn't so much due to STEEM though, but Steemit. If you go to Busy.org for example you'll find that it has many of the functions that Steemit is sorely missing. Sadly, I just don't like the 'feel' of it and the fact posts are smaller, so I use Steemit+addons.
I don't worry about the short/mid term either really, since Larimer still has to finish EOS, then polish it some, before he even has time to start a new project. Still, he isn't particularly known to stick around to really finish a project, so you never know. But if he actually goes through with building a competitor, I think its going to be popular. There are many fans of Dan Larimer, especially on Steemit. I don't know quite as many fans of @ned. SMTs are nice, but EOS itself is all about launching tokens. STEEM's blockchain could never compete on that level, simply because EOS is built from the ground up for them and STEEM is only adding them as a side-thought.
And yes I too do love the platform! Maybe I will simply get on both platforms, and crosspost everything anyway!
We'll see how this plays out. If I were Dan I would focus on EOS for the coming years, and not the dApps to be built on top of it. With Neo and Waves for instance, they are trying to built an ecosystem to support all projects launched on their blockchain.
I think that a lot of 'blockchain 3.0' projects forget to do that and just try to be superior on the tech part. Building an ecosystem takes a lot of time and it's vital to the success of the platform.