What I see is that if a front end wants to be "a Reddit" on a blockchain it can.
Steemit.com has proven this.
What I also see is that once SMTs are released, which is next on the "To Do" list, that there is no limit to what all can be done + be powered by Steem.
No limits as outlined by you "They can do that! It’s their website".
So there really is no need for Steemit Inc. to "hack" their own UI, in fact it would probably be counter productive (as outlined by @sorin.critescu ).
Love it, see some awesome potential out there for Steem.
I don’t get your point. How would SMTs bring functionalities that are not already in STEEM? They are just copycats, they can’t have different reward mecanisms.
They might have different inflation, supply, etc but rewards will be payed out every 7 days.
Even if you can change the amount of days, you still can’t have an infinite amount otherwise the author never gets payed. So you need a finite amount of days but different posts behind a single one anyway.