Long story short, we believe STEEM's rankings to be stale and easily manipulable (bidbots, curation guilds, etc).
The whole purpose of this new economy is to have better rankings and overall quality, so keeping the STEEM rankings would make little sense.

Amen to that. I've been so wearied by the stuff I see on Trending with the vote selling / vote buying circlejerks. We need a new era on this platform.

I'm all aboard the @Dtube train! Just got my green screen, mic and plan on cranking out some creative content once I finish up some things for Steemflagrewards. A few ideas:

• FlagTV: An Abuse Fighting Videocast
• Revenge of the Bionic Banfields: Narrated comic where Jerry Banfield seeks his revenge on Steem with his Banfield bot army in the year 2045.
• SteemHistorian: Dramatic retelling Steem history w flag wars

I know it's pretty ambition. I'll probably start with one and work on my skills for there. I see Dtube as an excellent opportunity for me to incubate my video production talent. I have the creativity. Just need a bit more procedural knowledge.

I did recently acquire some server hardware so may also be interested in running node as well. Going to look into this more when I get home. Really cool.