I'm too lazy to read what others have said, but in short:
Justin Sun bought Steemit, not Steem the blockchain. Steemit does have a significant power on the blockchain, but still they do not own the entire Steem.

Steem will become a fantastic tool for education.

Great question!  I definitely use this platform way less than I used to.  In fact, I use all social media way less than I used to.  I have a much busier life, and less time for doing fun photography things, thus less posting.  

Things have gotten so much better than when I was brought in during the bubble in 2018, especially @steempeak improving the face of it all.  

I'm just as curious as you as to where Steem will be in another two years, but I have high enough hopes to keep posting here and there, and not give up yet.

A person's future on STEEM is mainly about how much money a person has and their timing. On a quasi social media platform like this we buy our influence.

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Hey I have been away for 10 months myself and I was checking out the curation trail I was following back then and came across yours. Is that still active?

It's nice to see you again and I hope you hang around. @cryptoctopus
Anyway Justin Sun's purchase of steemit.com I think will market steem and would definitely in my opinion is what steem needs in order to improve its image to the public so I am all positive with the acquisition of Justin Sun because of that.

Come back we like you!

Omg it's been so long ! I'll let other expand on it but basically, smts, communities, hopefully massive marketing towards communities and emboarding. 

Glad to hear from you again !  Hope you're doing well :)

> ... feels strange that all of this happen a few days after we learn that the whole project has been purchased by TRON.

Amazing, right?  It's so cool that the Tron Foundation could get that all working so quickly.`/s`

If one was to be cynical, one would speculate that the talks necessitated a delay in Communities rollout.  But I was doing unofficial testing of Communities, and I speculate that if there was a delay like that, it was very minimal.

The real story is: Communities were designed in parallel with AppBase, Mira, SMTs, and layoffs.  Some of these (AppBase, Mira) were functional prerequisites for Communities, due to scaling concerns.

It's one of those situations where you take away people from a late project, it gets later.  But it's also true that if you add people to a late project, it also gets later.

**Good to hear from you... So what's next you ask?**

- **VIEWERS:** A bigger focus on VIEWERS... because that's what content creators want... Viewers. So more focus on ability to comment and like a picture without having a steem blockchain account and to do it in moments.
Also a bigger focus on the benefits outside of rewards
- **CONNECTED ENTRY:** Meaning users bringing in their friends and connections into the platform. Everyone kind of being a part of that process instead of expecting one large company to do it ... instead make sure that new users already have a connection. 
- **NON REWARD BENEFITS:** There are more ways for a talented content creator to earn than rewards. Tips, promoted posts, ads, patreon-esque systems. Everyone of those things has the potential to make more than rewards is likely to do. So we can consider all of them at the very least... not instead... but in addition. And many of them aren't just about the wallet of your viewer but some of them tend to be about quantity of viewers.
- **EASE OF USE:** I think right now we're all about features... busy pumping out things. But we'll need to of course make sure the design is intuitive for new users. 
- **CONTENT DISCOVERY:** I think there are still many methods to improve a person's ability to find content. Searches, Badges (new), Communities (new) and a few other tricks up our sleaves.
- **CONTINUE TO BUILD UP COMMUNITIES:** A page for the community will continue to have more and more feature options. Don't expect those to stay stagnant. 
- **SMTs:** They'll come out in a few months and people will be excited but they won't change everything... because a tool doesn't change things as much as well executed examples of usage of a tool changes things. So we'll see SMTs ammount to something when there are several examples of really well executed usage.  Same thing with communities... they are amazing but until we see some really great examples of mass usage of communities anywhere close to what's on reddit then that's when they'll meen so much more. 
- **A CHANGE IN MESSAGE:** In general the message of steem/steemit/steempeak seems to be shifting away from discussions about rewards. Not entirely but since steem does so many other things super well it's nice seeing this shift because there are other things we'll always do well while rewards seems to be a shaky or at least confrontational foundation to build your message on
- **ACTUAL PROMOTION:** Then at some point we start to realize there is a really great rentention rate on steem/steempeak. That's when we pull the trigger on marketing. I've got some fun things in mind for that. 


Anyway that's my thoughts and probably very related to what we're thinking on @steempeak https://steempeak.com/