Yes, agreed. It doesn't mean that will happen though. Like I said, it was a nice little niche market. I';m sure some were motivated by that as well. Now their market just got discontinued. I don't hate on the feature theme because it still did bring attention to authors even if they were making SP off it.
But yes, the reblog option is much more contributor friendly. Better bang for the buck.
I do wish I could reblog without it showing up in my personal blog though. It makes me want to reblog super selectively as I don't want my blog in a messy disarray.
Totally! Reblogging is more contributor friendly. And yes I agree with you but like I mentioned, this feature still has a lot of room for improvement, I am sure the DEV team will work on it.
If you look into it, there are a lot of shady stuff behind featured authors. There are quite a few, that get consistently featured, have low followers in their journal, post almost nothing there, and moved $5-10k SBD out of the system. Perhaps not as quick as @msgivings, but for me that casts a doubt on the whole "did bring attention to the authors". Still, good for them. :-D