I'm not sure what is going on, they should be working hard, but I do feel the disconnect, users used to be overexcited for steem everybody was screaming and they were the big celebrity, now it's quiet and ghostly here, people are spent most of them have lost the drive.
It's a matter of time to see how things will go, the patch can change things for the better or revitalize the "belief" in "Father Steem\Holy Upvote and the resteem in between" :D
If Dan and the Steemit team were hard at work on features, we probably wouldn't see many posts from them, exactly as it is now. I don't have any desire to see them actively trying to pump the price with posts.
User interface and user experience are the top issues for Steemit right now IMO. These will be solved by programmers keeping their heads down writing and testing.