Thanks for this feedback, I'd been wondering how it was going and aware that I hadn't commented on your "first thoughts" post. I think, though, my thoughts have been shared by other members of the tesm.
The main thing that strikes me about this (apart from the potential impact) is the huge amount if work involved - I don't think this is always recognised.
On your last point, how does this objectivity relate to your post about the steem whitepaper? That seemed more optimistic, have you changed your view?
From a pragmatic point of view, it's just taken me all morning to write half of the post I intended to write - the website was slow and clunky - and there is the ongoing problem of the orientation of pictures. It is not an easy or pleasant experience to blog here sometimes, and combined with the challenges of steem/steemit overall, I'm not surprised activity is decreasing.
I take the point about future scale, but it is a bit of a losing-the-will experience.