When SMTs come out I think it would be great to not only have an easy way to create your own tokens, but also to have an easy way to launch your own front-end site using those tokens. If you create your own site on top of Steem then you can fix all of the "issues" you may see with SteemIt.com however you see fit. Then if others also like your changes they can switch to using your site.

This is where I think the real future of the Steem platform is - a whole series of different sites / communities etc built on top of the Steem blockchain, using their own tokens

This! Kind of like a Ning network built on the Steem blockchain.