Thank you very much, I have high hopes for steemit and others like it, I see them taking a solid chunk out of the current centralized privatized models we see today. I feel like whales now are working more efficiently and effectively then they were before, and for the beginning I truly feel like whales favoring anyone specifically for an extended period of time will have a negative effect on the community as a whole. Just until steem is a little better distributed anyways.
It can be quite disheartening putting hours into a post (not this one) getting nothing, and watching the same people get high payouts over and over simply from having a bot follow them. But as a whole I think steemit is progressing nicely, the changes happen quickly (the mining hack was a good example of that) and I fell like the devs actually want this to succeed long term, and they have my backing.